topic Re: Accessing RMS indexed files from PHP in Operating System - OpenVMS

Accessing RMS indexed files from PHP

Gary Smallridge — Mon, 14 May 2007 08:39:30 GMT

I've looked at the 'documentation' for the OpenVMS extension to PHP but it's of little help.

If this meant to be the OpenVMS API for PHP, why is there no documentation for it?

What function calls are available that would allow me to open an RMS indexed file in PHP?

Re: Accessing RMS indexed files from PHP

Duncan Morris — Mon, 14 May 2007 10:24:48 GMT

Hi Gary,

not a great help, I know, but have a look at this thread. In particular see Hein's response.

http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1081795

Regards,

Duncan

Re: Accessing RMS indexed files from PHP

Hoff — Mon, 14 May 2007 10:30:29 GMT

Somebody from HP will have to informally or more formally answer the "why is there no documentation for it?" question.

AFAIK, there are no PHP extension calls for accessing indexed files. You might ask HP this question directly.

PHP and most other languages are most commonly coded to communicate with sequential files and with MySQL, ProgreSQL or other similar database packages. Not RMS.

There are extensions for some languages that allow access. Python, Perl and DCL do have access to RMS indexed files. Haven't checked Ruby. There does not appear, however, to be an extension available for PHP for this purpose.

The usual database interface for most languages would likely involve acquiring and configuring an ODBC connector for RMS. These products do (did?) exist. Alternatively, rolling your own PHP interface for RMS indexed files, or convincing an outside organization to provide the interface to you, or convincing HP to extend the existing php_openvms module.

Not what you want to hear, I expect.

Re: Accessing RMS indexed files from PHP

Robert Atkinson — Tue, 15 May 2007 03:14:09 GMT

Gary, for what it's worth, I never found anything I could use for indexed files on VMS, apart from the suggestions made in my original thread.

I'm still left with using Attunity Connect ODBC drivers, which will allow me to read using the indexes, or scanning the whole file and breaking it up into records with PHP.

Rob.

Re: Accessing RMS indexed files from PHP

Gary Smallridge — Tue, 15 May 2007 03:28:29 GMT

Robert,

Retrieving all the records is what I have resorted to.

FYI: open the file for binary read access;

$fp=fopen("file.idx","rb");

then each record can be read;

$record = fgets($fp,396);

the file I'm accessing is fixed length 396 byte records and has a single key. There are also binary 2 and binary 4 numbers in each record which I would have to write code for.