CoSORT: Sort Control Language Program

CoSORT's sort control language (SortCL) program is what makes CoSORT much more than a sort package. As the most flexible and feature-rich interface in the CoSORT, package, SortCL wraps a very familiar and easy-to-use fourth-generation language (4GL) syntax around the CoSORT engine and adds the ability to perform many data transformations simultaneously and generate custom reports. You call SortCL from the command line, batch scripts, Java GUI, programs and/or via API.

SortCL is both a Data Definition Language (DDL) for building (or converting from third-party) metadata, and a Data Manipulation Language (DML) for specifying job parameters job -- be it a sort, merge, join, check, or report. Because the data layouts and manipulation specifications are in the same language, you can create a single job script (or specification file, .scl) that contains all of your input and output layouts and your processing and formatting specifications. Alternatively, you can create smaller job scripts that reference separately-stored data layouts in a Data Definition File (.ddf) repository.

In a single pass through your data (multiple sequential sources -- usually flat files -- in multiple formats) and in just one SortCL job script, you can rapidly perform and combine high-volume data staging functions in a high-volume Operational Data Store (ODS) or data warehouse Extraction, Transformation, and (database) Loading (ETL) environment (click on individual links):

· extract
· select
· join
· sort
· merge
· cross-calculate
· type-convert
· field-remap
· file-reformat
· aggregate
· load

Combining these functions is also common in SortCL reports, which allow custom layouts.

SortCL also works hand-in-glove with CoSORT's FAst extraCT (FACT) unload product for staged
or simultaneous Oracle reorg and ETL operations.

Click here for information on legacy sort parm conversion to SortCL job specification files.

Click here for information on the CoSORT package and its other interfaces.