Welcome to JRI's Help page for MERGE

The MERGE utility is designed to blend the data DICTs and the raw data of a record into a blended view. If a field/Dict has a conversion code, OCONVS is used to show the data both in raw form and output form. Each row of Dict/data is truncated at 80 characters, thus if there is a lot of data in a field, you will not see it all - this is by design - MERGE is meant to get a quick view of what a record looks like, not an in depth view of everything.

  1. How It Works
    After verifying the file name, MERGE will read in all D-type dict items.
    The Dict field header (F4) will be used as the prompt of the field.
    If there is not a value in F4, it will use the Dict name itself.
    If there are no Dicts for a field, there is no prompt (though each field is preceeded by the field number.
    If there are multiple D-type dicts for a single field, it is a bit of a crap shoot as to which one you will get - the program has no idea which is the better dict to use - this is esp. bad if there are multiple types of records in a single file (like DMSECURITY) - see MERGE.DICTS.DEFN below.

  2. Syntax
    There are muliple ways to use MERGE:
    • From the command line, type:
      MERGE
      then from within the program, manually enter the filename and key
    • From the command line, type:
      MERGE filename
      which will auto-populate the supplied filename then manually enter the key
    • From the command line, type:
      MERGE filename key
      which will auto-populate the supplied filename and key
    • From the command line, manually select the records you wish to view, then type:
      MERGE filename
      MERGE will then loop through each of the keys in the active SELECT
    • From the command line, type:
      MERGE filename *
      MERGE will loop through all the records in filename
    • From the command line, use any of the above syntax, followed by "USING DICT filename2".
      For example:
      MERGE filename1 key USING DICT filename2
      MERGE will use the DICT for filename2 with the data in filename1.
  3. MERGE.DICTS.DEFN
    Some files, have muliple formats of data in the files (DSCTBL, DMSECURITY, SYSTBL, etc.). In some cases, we can define what a specific record would look like or a set of records look like. Use process MERGE.DICTS.DEFN to define a fake Dict for a specific record or types of records.
    These fake Dicts are stored in a file called: MERGE.DICTS.
    Col Description
    Fld The field number in the record
    Conv Conversion code applied to the field
    Fld Description The description/prompt used

    if we now type:
    MERGE DSCTBL PO.WORKFLOW.CTL
    we will see the above field descriptions merged with the data in that control record as follows:

    If you type "EMAIL" at the prompt, it will email the merged datat to you.

  4. Navigation
    • After processing the last key (or the only key), MERGE will default to same filename and the last key and re-display that same info.
    • While going page by page through a record, you can type "B" to go back 1 page at a time (though not back a record).
    • You can type "S" to skip the current record and move on to the next record (assuming you have an active SELECT list).