question Re: What is recommended way of moving mainframe data in Packed-Decimal fomat to Hive, either as text or ORC format? in Archives of Support Questions (Read Only)

What is recommended way of moving mainframe data in Packed-Decimal fomat to Hive, either as text or ORC format?

hduraiswamy — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 12:28:46 GMT

I know Syncsort is a possible solution here, but wanted to check if we HDF can do the job and if we have any other recommendation other than Syncsort ??

Re: What is recommended way of moving mainframe data in Packed-Decimal fomat to Hive, either as text or ORC format?

ajaysingh1 — Wed, 21 Sep 2016 10:02:23 GMT

Most ETL vendors have mainframe integration. For near realtime integration, you may want to look into Attunity.

Re: What is recommended way of moving mainframe data in Packed-Decimal fomat to Hive, either as text or ORC format?

rgelhausen — Wed, 21 Sep 2016 10:08:14 GMT

@hduraiswamy - in order of preference

SyncSort

Use the mainframe’s native JDBC services – often unacceptable as the mainframe must consume additional MIPS to convert into JDBC types before sending over the net
Use this open serde which unfortunately skips reading everything except fixed length fields, severely limiting usefulness
I've heard about LegStar being used for similar projects, but am not sure how.

Re: What is recommended way of moving mainframe data in Packed-Decimal fomat to Hive, either as text or ORC format?

hduraiswamy — Wed, 21 Sep 2016 10:17:20 GMT

Thanks @ajaysingh

Re: What is recommended way of moving mainframe data in Packed-Decimal fomat to Hive, either as text or ORC format?

hduraiswamy — Wed, 21 Sep 2016 10:17:49 GMT

Thanks @Randy Gelhausen

Re: What is recommended way of moving mainframe data in Packed-Decimal fomat to Hive, either as text or ORC format?

TimothySpann — Wed, 21 Sep 2016 20:51:05 GMT

Java Library + Spark => Magic

https://github.com/gmallard/packed-decimal

You could also have that in a dataflow in NiFi

1. get the file via NiFi GetFile

2. ExecuteStreamCommand packed-decimal Java class

2b. or call via Kafka/JMS to Java or Spark program

3. Insert or save as ORC

4. Create a hive table on top