Which version of z/OS CMOD has ARSDOC GET returning usable AFP, PDF documents ?

[LWagner]

Does anyone know which version of z/OS CMOD can do this correctly ?
My z/OS server is 8.4.0.3, and is functioning fine, until this request was made.
8.4.1.4 might fix the problem. I would like to make just one upgrade, not a series which never corrects the one thing that is a problem.

My Customer Service group needs to retrieve three years of AFP bills for 800 accounts for a lawsuit. Potentially at least 14,400 bills. My attempts at automated retrieval using ARSDOC GET only return the first page of each bill in an AFP PC document. Those files are viewable with arsview.exe .  We also need to retrieve three years of any PDF documents for newer bills. First attempts to retrieve those individually produced unopenable PDF files.

IBM has suggested using the CD Mastering process to make a local server, and save these files to the data folder.  The actual copy to a CD is just a move of all local server files.  I will try this and see if the additional pages suddenly appear when using the CMOD client.


It seems ARSDOC GET has never been able to do this at least at 8.4.03

[Justin Derrick]

Try installing CMOD on a Desktop PC or Linux VM, and give it a try from there.  That's probably easier than upgrading a mainframe.    You might be able to pinpoint the version that works (at least on Win/Linux).

-JD.

[LWagner]

IBM tried a PDF and it worked.  I suspect it wa a normal one to one PDF store.  One report in one PDF.
Our bills are in container PDFs, about 200 bills to each one. If we extract an entire loadid, all the PDFs are valid. But with a loadid extract, the documentation states -i SQL option does not work.

With 700 container PDFs per day, we would have to look at load times of a bill and the 87 records in the System Log to figure out which loadid conained the bill we are looking for, even if just a few, extract all, open each individual PDF looking for the one to re-print.  Not a viable option unless it would save the world, and nothing less would do it. Average opening 300 or more PDFs looking for one, and repeat that 14,000 or more times.

Easier to print all 14,000 bills from the CMOD client.

[LWagner]

I solved my arsdoc GET puzzle.

Except now the AFP's sometimes append files, and sometimes don't.

[LWagner]

With 8.4.0.3, I can't seem to use -o "(index_2)(POSTING_DATE)[.SEQ]" type format outside a parameter file.

But I can not retrieve AFP documents with a parameter file.

Are these two truly exclusive ?

[2ma2]

Hello LWagner

The .SEQ is new to arsdoc get in OD 8.5.
Though I have successfully retrieved AFP documents from an 8.4 OnDemand using .SEQ by pointing to a 8.5 version.:
/usr/lpp/ars/V8R5M0/bin/arsdoc get -h prodlpar  -v -
-d /u/kmdimn/output/LETTERS/                            -     
-G 'LETTERS'                                                       -   
-o "(Senr)(Crnr)(Listenumber)".SEQ                      -   
...
...

[LWagner]

My AFP customer bills are all migrated to 8.5 from 2.1, which has different data object indexing.
IBM Support says the -X load id option is not capable of retrieving those documents correctly.  I could retrieve them by some other method, using SQL specifications.

Much of the customer data is set to be deleted after 7 years, and is now 3 years old.  Unless the migration process takes faster than expected, and under 4 years, I may just let the data expire. Our two other other AFP reports have a mix of migrated loads in 2.1 and active loads in 8.5.

This learned from IBM as I provided detail and age of the data I was trying to move in a PMR.