PowerBSORT


Contents

• Detailed Features and Benefits
• An In-Depth Look at Fujitsu PowerBSORT
• Platforms Supported
• Frequently Asked Questions

PowerBSORT significantly shortens the time needed to merge or sort data for business processing. You get rapid, high-performance merging and sorting of large volumes of data without disrupting your current environment. PowerBSORT thus offers a straightforward way to slash response times for merges and sorts.

Highlights

• Improve merge/sort times by as much as 100% over other solutions
• Boost the efficiency of data searches by loading sorted data into DBMS tables
• Simplify merge, sort, and copy operations with an easy-to-use interface
• Speed processing without extra programming effort or disruption to your environment

PowerBSORT handles a variety of file types. It sorts and merges Btrieve files and COBOL85 files directly on Windows 98/Me/NT/2000/XP/2003 platforms.

Additionally, you have flexibility in the way you use PowerBSORT. You can include PowerBSORT in both COBOL and C-language applications.

Along with the merge, sort, and copy functions, PowerBSORT provides a record reconstruction feature that creates an output record by relocating and combining fields from the input record with self-defined values. Further, a same-key feature combines values from multiple records into a single record by adding the summation field values when records have the same key field value. The same-key feature is used with the sort or merge functions.

All the features of PowerBSORT are easy to use, with menus and a tool bar making choices clear. PowerBSORT gives you more than one way to perform many actions. When specifying a sort key, for example, you can either type the specification or use a specialized dialog box. A key can also be selected from the list of previously specified key fields by clicking PowerBSORT's History button. Detailed on-line help is always available.

Tests have shown that PowerBSORT merges and sorts data approximately 30% faster than the sort function in COBOL. You can shorten sort times even more using the PowerBSORT command window. By substituting PowerBSORT for the merge/sort utility you currently use, you gain immediate productivity improvements.

PowerBSORT Features

• SORT – sort records in a specified sequence
• MERGE- merge sorted records
• COPY - output records from one file to another
• Record Selection - select records to SORT, MERGE or COPY
• Record Reconstruction - pick up the specified field of an input record, and reconstruct the record during sorting, merging or copying
• Same Key - during SORT or MERGE you can output records according to the input order, delete all records except only one record, combine records into one record by summing up the summary field values for the records with the same key.
• Supported Files - NetCOBOL files, Btrieve files,
• Data Types - ASCII Code (compares as passed as 8 bits)
• Fixed Point Binary Number (C integer type)… Big Endian/Little Endian
• Floating Point Binary Number
• Packed Decimal Number and External Decimal Number in COBOL
  
  

Detailed Features and Benefits

The table below lists key features and benefits of PowerBSORT.

PowerBSORT provides the following sort and related functions for COBOL, text and binary files:

Sort records by a specified key.

Merge files according to the order specified by a key field.

Copy files from one organization to another.

Select records from files.

Combine two or more records, summing a specified field.

Use input data to create different record structures in the output file.