BCP with PC/IXF Format

[tonisyb]

Hi

What is the command line option to bcp out a table into a date file in the PC/IXF format so that it can be read by another DBMS?

Thanks

 

[grega]

Not sure about PC/IXF format (never heard of it). The generally accepted way to share bcp data is to use the -c switch, which will dump data from Sybase with a TAB field delimiter and a NEWLINE record delimiter.

If you do this, it should be readable by any DB, or at least it will be easy to manipulate the bcp file in any way you need.

Greg.

 

[tonisyb]

Hi

The PC/IXF format stores all the table information in the file so that it can be recreated in the destination db. I need to avoid having to recreate 800 Sybase tables manually on DB2, which is what I will need to do should I bcp using the -c option.

Thanks

 

[JMCraig]

BCP doesn't support the format in question (which I'm guessing may be proprietary to DB2 or some other package). In any case, BCP is purely a DATA copying facility (no meta-data). You can have Sybase Central dump the DDL for your DB so you can run that against DB2 and then load the data.

Years ago, I was involved in creating a utility that did something like what you have in mind. If you'd be interested in some suggestions about how to implement it (in say Java), contact me directly.

HTH,

John
nsjmcraig@netscape.net