Browse

Use the Browse Utility to review the contents of an Archive, Compare, Extract, or Control File. You can browse the contents of a file to obtain information or to determine that the data is as expected.

For example, you can browse the contents of an Archive File to review data without having to restore it to the database. This may be an easy solution when handling a customer inquiry or resolving a problem. Browse the contents of a Control File to review rows discarded during an Insert, Convert, Load or Delete Process, and the reasons they were discarded. The Control File identifies each row that was processed with a code for the reason for each failure.

Default extensions for the files are as follows:

Archive File
.af
Extract File
.xf
Compare File
.cmp
Control File
.cf
Note: See the Compare User Manual for detailed information about browsing data in a Compare File

The Browse Utility allows you to select a table in a file and browse the data in the table. Table data is displayed in a dialog that allows you to display character data in hexadecimal, exclude selected rows from the display, and navigate the displayed data. When browsing an Archive, Control, or Extract File, you can join to related rows in other tables.

Long Object Names (LONs)

When browsing an Archive file migrated from the mainframe version of Optim™ (that is, the Optim z/OS® Solution), any object names that exceed the maximum length for an Optim client/server object of the same type are truncated. When this happens, the truncated name is suffixed with the code “__TRUNC__”. A 128-character Creator ID, for example, might be truncated in Optim as follows:

PSTASLG_1234567890_xx__TRUNC__

Contents

This section explains how to browse data in these files, manipulate the display, and perform the following tasks: