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Moving APPX Files Between Platforms

The above title is not accurate, but it does represent a typical migration that these instructions are designed to describe.

An accurate title would be "Moving APPX files between platforms of differing 'Endians'", but if you don't know what an Endian is, that's not very useful.

Most Intel and RISC platforms use different 'Endian's, or byte ordering. The first Endian type (typically Intel chip based) includes Windows NT and 9x, Linux, NCR/AT&T, and SCO Unix platforms. The 2nd Endian type includes most other Unix platforms.

So it is necessary to perform special processing to move APPX files transported between the two Endian types of platforms.

To move your application from your AIX to your APPX for Windows standalone, follow these steps:

1. In 3)System Admin, 3)Database/Applications, 5)Design File Management for your Application, perform 8)Export.

2. Navigate to the $APPXPATH/vv/AAA/Portdata directory that this created. (Where vv = Version# (such as '00'), AAA = Application ID.) Note that the files you just created all have a ".dat" suffix. We call this 'brf' format.

3. Convert your brf formatted exported data from Portdata format into ASCII format by logging on as appx ("su appx"), then performing the following. (You can put this into a script, or else just 'paste' this from here into your terminal emulator.):

appx -e=CHILD
appx -e=CHR
appx -e=DICTNARY
appx -e=DOCUMENT
appx -e=DOMAIN
appx -e=EXCEPT
appx -e=FIELD
appx -e=FRAME
appx -e=IMAGE
appx -e=ITEM
appx -e=PARAM
appx -e=PROCESS
appx -e=RECORD
appx -e=RESNAMES
appx -e=RESOURCE
appx -e=ROW
appx -e=SAVTRACE
appx -e=SELECT
appx -e=SORT
appx -e=STMT
appx -e=TOKEN
appx -e=WIDGET
appx -e=XLAT

4. Move your ASCII-formatted export files (the ones without the '.dat' suffixes) from your AIX to your PC. Be sure and use a binary, and not an ASCII type transfer!!

5. On your PC in 3)SysAdmin, 3)Database/Applications, 1)Applications, create your Application (if it doesn't already exist).

6. In 3)Database/Applications, 5)Design File Mgmt for your Application, run 3)Create Files (if they don't already exist).

7. If it doesn't already exist, create on your PC a directory $APPXPATH/vv/AAA/Portdata. Move your ASCII-formatted export files (without the *.dat suffix) into this directory.

8. If your $APPXPATH/vv/AAA/Portdata contains any *.dat files, delete, move, or rename them.

9. Convert the ASCII-formatted export files into brf format, by pasting the following commands into a Windows DOS box:

appx -i=CHILD
appx -i=CHR
appx -i=DICTNARY
appx -i=DOCUMENT
appx -i=DOMAIN
appx -i=EXCEPT
appx -i=FIELD
appx -i=FRAME
appx -i=IMAGE
appx -i=ITEM
appx -i=PARAM
appx -i=PROCESS
appx -i=RECORD
appx -i=RESNAMES
appx -i=RESOURCE
appx -i=ROW
appx -i=SAVTRACE
appx -i=SELECT
appx -i=SORT
appx -i=STMT
appx -i=TOKEN
appx -i=WIDGET
appx -i=XLAT

(You may find that 'appxutil' works better for you, than the 'appx -i=' technique.)

10. In Design File Management, perform 7)Import.

11. Process your Data Dictionary, create your Enduser Datafiles, and go!

To bring datafiles over from your AIX box to your PC, perform the same process as above under Database Management, using directory $APPXPATH/ddd/AAA/Portdata instead of $APPXPATH/vv/AAA/Portdata (where 'ddd' is your Database ID). Make sure you're su 'd to the 'appx' UserID.

In place of step 3) above, perform a script that looks like the following:

#
# shell script to convert all filenames in a directory to uppercase
# and run appx -i=<filename> prior to import into APPX.
#

for file in *
do

echo $file>fnamelow
tr [a-z] [A-Z] <fnamelow>fnamecap
LOWER=`<fnamelow`
UPPER=`<fnamecap`
echo $LOWER $UPPER
mv $LOWER $UPPER
appx -i=$UPPER

done
rm fnamelow fnamecap
chmod 777 *
chown appx *