Conversion from Quick Jobs to Eazytrieve

acs_amit · New User Joined: 30 Apr 2009 Posts: 14 Location: Noida

Hi All,

Actually i am not very much familiar to Quick Jobs and Easytrieve Jobs. I know only one thing that both are used for Reporting purposes.

I am asked to create a TOOL which will read Quick job and will convert them in Easytrieve equivalent. The tool should convert almost 100% or at whatever extent is possible.

I just want to discuss this with you guys.. Is this easily possible or It is a tough task to convert. Has anybody worked on similar kind of requirements ?
If you people have good links for understanding quick jobs and Easytrieve, then you may be very helpful to me..

Thanks in advance.

enrico-sorichetti · Posted: Mon May 18, 2009 5:04 pm

You will need to...

describe in a formal way the quick job grammar
build a scanner/parser to produce the syntax tree
from the syntax tree build the equivalent eazytrieve statements

it would be wiser to search for an existing and well tested tool

a google search for "quick job" reengineering
returned a reengineering tool from quick job ( vision report) to cobol and/or sort
gsf-soft.com/Products/QJB2CBL.shtml
not advertising or endorsing ( just a sample of what can be found by searching )

acs_amit · New User Joined: 30 Apr 2009 Posts: 14 Location: Noida

Thanks Enrico..

This will definately help me to start thinking for creating the tool.

enrico-sorichetti · Posted: Mon May 18, 2009 5:38 pm

unless You are proficient and familiar with
grammar handling, scanning and parsing techniques and tools,
AST ( abstract syntax tree ) manipulation, symbol table handling,
add a few more topics on compiler building techniques and tools

I stand by my advice to search for a commercial tool to carry on the task
( ready made or built by somebody with already available skill and experience )

dick scherrer · Posted: Mon May 18, 2009 6:41 pm

Hello,

To implement what you want, one would need to be fluent with the syntax of both tools. You say you are not even familiar with either.

If one was fluent in both sets of syntax, this is still not a trivial task to do properly.

Suggest you consider/follow Enrico's advice.

acs_amit · New User Joined: 30 Apr 2009 Posts: 14 Location: Noida

At this point of time, I don't know a single bit of Quick Job and Easytrieve. I have just started learning both of them. My employer keeps a very aggressive approach while assigning tasks.

We have experts from both the language for help but for conversion tool in REXX, we have a very few number of associates.

For Commerical Tool I just can request to my seniors but its all upto them and even that is organizational decision to invest to purchase such tool. and i am quite sure that they won't pick anyone until it is a freeware.

Now there is only two way. either we will convert all of our Q jobs manually in Easytrieve format or will go for creating such tool even though its a big task.

And in later case, i just can request to my god to keep me out from writing such tools.. I am not running out of my Job-responsibilities but you know, the kind of deadlines they make, are really deadly..

I will again ask for help over any issue if i am forced to write such tool. till then, Thanks all of you for your inputs and support..

mtaylor · Posted: Mon May 18, 2009 9:03 pm

Considering the examples of Quikjob programs in the link enrico posted, it appears that Quickjobs only has goto for control flow. Easytrieve has goto, but also the JOB statement which is an implicit loop. It would be difficult to map Quikjob goto's to the INPUT structure; you'd probably have to use all goto's and INPUT NULL.

The other thing is: format of the generated reports. It's doubtful you will be able to use Easytrieve to exactly duplicate, character for character the text of the reports. We used to have clients who had tools that depended on the exact format of our reports to drive applications at their site. So if you go and change all these reports, it may be a good idea to check with the users of the reports first. You may go through all the work to do the conversion and then find the users can't use the new output.

This would be an interesting project. If it were me I'd use something like: SPARK to rapidly imlement the parser in Python. For a one time conversion performance wouldn't be an issue. You must of course know Python though.

Edit; looks like QuikJobs is now CA Vision:Report:

http://www.ca.com/us/products/product.aspx?id=1565