Hi Guys,

I needed to dump the contents of a transaction file for our Auditors today and a simple retrieve report should have been the simple solution, as it only need sorting by date with no calcs, and all the dictionary's already setup, and probably not needed again.....

However, because of the 32,767 (ROW) page length limit the .CSV hold file with 680,000 rows of data, had many extra "page breaks" to dispense with.

I was reluctant to write a one off program, so sorted it in the VOC paragraph, that produced the report, so the Auditors are happy, but  it took me longer than in really should have because of the 32,767 SETPTR limit.

So does anyone know why we have such an arbitrary number as the limit for SETPTR and does anyone know of a simple override aside writing a one off program  to poke it directly into &HOLD& rather than using a retrieve report??

Also another thought, the SETPTR command displays your current output settings so these values must be stored for your current session, does  anyone know where these are stored, DMSESURITY maybe ?? as i was wondering if these could be tweaked and overridden with the editor as the 32,767 is effectively a counter ???

Thanks as always for your advice and help

Andy

Andrew, 
  See if the "NFMT" option of  the SETPTR statement fixes this for you.  That should tell the system that YOU are controlling page breaks.

 NFMT            Specifies that the application controls  
                 pagination and formatting instead of the
                 spooler.

Hi Guys,

I needed to dump the contents of a transaction file for our Auditors today and a simple retrieve report should have been the simple solution, as it only need sorting by date with no calcs, and all the dictionary's already setup, and probably not needed again.....

However, because of the 32,767 (ROW) page length limit the .CSV hold file with 680,000 rows of data, had many extra "page breaks" to dispense with.

I was reluctant to write a one off program, so sorted it in the VOC paragraph, that produced the report, so the Auditors are happy, but  it took me longer than in really should have because of the 32,767 SETPTR limit.

So does anyone know why we have such an arbitrary number as the limit for SETPTR and does anyone know of a simple override aside writing a one off program  to poke it directly into &HOLD& rather than using a retrieve report??

Also another thought, the SETPTR command displays your current output settings so these values must be stored for your current session, does  anyone know where these are stored, DMSESURITY maybe ?? as i was wondering if these could be tweaked and overridden with the editor as the 32,767 is effectively a counter ???

Thanks as always for your advice and help

Andy

Andrew,

Are you looking to do this in UniData or UniVerse ?

Thanks,
Jonathan

Hi Jonathan,

this is on Universe  11.2.5

thanks

Hi Guys,

I needed to dump the contents of a transaction file for our Auditors today and a simple retrieve report should have been the simple solution, as it only need sorting by date with no calcs, and all the dictionary's already setup, and probably not needed again.....

However, because of the 32,767 (ROW) page length limit the .CSV hold file with 680,000 rows of data, had many extra "page breaks" to dispense with.

I was reluctant to write a one off program, so sorted it in the VOC paragraph, that produced the report, so the Auditors are happy, but  it took me longer than in really should have because of the 32,767 SETPTR limit.

So does anyone know why we have such an arbitrary number as the limit for SETPTR and does anyone know of a simple override aside writing a one off program  to poke it directly into &HOLD& rather than using a retrieve report??

Also another thought, the SETPTR command displays your current output settings so these values must be stored for your current session, does  anyone know where these are stored, DMSESURITY maybe ?? as i was wondering if these could be tweaked and overridden with the editor as the 32,767 is effectively a counter ???

Thanks as always for your advice and help

Andy

Thanks Ryan,

I've already gone though all the standard SETPTR parameters,

Unfortunately NFMT on Universe, seems to have no effect for me,

SETPTR ,,,,,3,NFMT,NODEFAULT,NOFORMFEED,BRIEF,BANNER ANDY.TXT

This leaves my page length at the current 132 wide 60 Long to a Holdfile ANDY.TXT

So unless i enter new Page Width and Length the default of 132 and 60 remains active

SETPTR ,10000,32767,,,3,BANNER ANDY.TXT,BRIEF,NFMT,NOFORMFEED

this gives me the Max Page size i can get, which as i described above with  680,000 rows still leaves me with many unwanted page breaks, in fact 6 unwanted rows, at each page break,

I made the paragraph for the report locate the  first heading line in the Holdfile then deleted the 6 unwanted rows, rinse and repeat, a PITA to setup but it got the job done.

BTW. Our Auditor insisted the detail had to come directly from the system without going via Excel. as they wanted to see the Transaction Data dump Run, they use this to randomly pick transactions they want to see the full transaction trail on......

As we will have the same Auditors next year i will do it in a program, but was pushed for time yesterday, and i believe as all the Data Dictionary's were already setup this should have been achievable in Retrieve 

So if anyone has any other useful ideas, to create holdfile output without page breaks, and without resorting to writing a program let our community know please,

Many Thanks

Andy

Thanks Ryan,

I've already gone though all the standard SETPTR parameters,

Unfortunately NFMT on Universe, seems to have no effect for me,

SETPTR ,,,,,3,NFMT,NODEFAULT,NOFORMFEED,BRIEF,BANNER ANDY.TXT

This leaves my page length at the current 132 wide 60 Long to a Holdfile ANDY.TXT

So unless i enter new Page Width and Length the default of 132 and 60 remains active

SETPTR ,10000,32767,,,3,BANNER ANDY.TXT,BRIEF,NFMT,NOFORMFEED

this gives me the Max Page size i can get, which as i described above with  680,000 rows still leaves me with many unwanted page breaks, in fact 6 unwanted rows, at each page break,

I made the paragraph for the report locate the  first heading line in the Holdfile then deleted the 6 unwanted rows, rinse and repeat, a PITA to setup but it got the job done.

BTW. Our Auditor insisted the detail had to come directly from the system without going via Excel. as they wanted to see the Transaction Data dump Run, they use this to randomly pick transactions they want to see the full transaction trail on......

As we will have the same Auditors next year i will do it in a program, but was pushed for time yesterday, and i believe as all the Data Dictionary's were already setup this should have been achievable in Retrieve 

So if anyone has any other useful ideas, to create holdfile output without page breaks, and without resorting to writing a program let our community know please,

Many Thanks

Andy

Thanks Ryan,

I've already gone though all the standard SETPTR parameters,

Unfortunately NFMT on Universe, seems to have no effect for me,

SETPTR ,,,,,3,NFMT,NODEFAULT,NOFORMFEED,BRIEF,BANNER ANDY.TXT

This leaves my page length at the current 132 wide 60 Long to a Holdfile ANDY.TXT

So unless i enter new Page Width and Length the default of 132 and 60 remains active

SETPTR ,10000,32767,,,3,BANNER ANDY.TXT,BRIEF,NFMT,NOFORMFEED

this gives me the Max Page size i can get, which as i described above with  680,000 rows still leaves me with many unwanted page breaks, in fact 6 unwanted rows, at each page break,

I made the paragraph for the report locate the  first heading line in the Holdfile then deleted the 6 unwanted rows, rinse and repeat, a PITA to setup but it got the job done.

BTW. Our Auditor insisted the detail had to come directly from the system without going via Excel. as they wanted to see the Transaction Data dump Run, they use this to randomly pick transactions they want to see the full transaction trail on......

As we will have the same Auditors next year i will do it in a program, but was pushed for time yesterday, and i believe as all the Data Dictionary's were already setup this should have been achievable in Retrieve 

So if anyone has any other useful ideas, to create holdfile output without page breaks, and without resorting to writing a program let our community know please,

Many Thanks

Andy

Thanks Ryan,

I've already gone though all the standard SETPTR parameters,

Unfortunately NFMT on Universe, seems to have no effect for me,

SETPTR ,,,,,3,NFMT,NODEFAULT,NOFORMFEED,BRIEF,BANNER ANDY.TXT

This leaves my page length at the current 132 wide 60 Long to a Holdfile ANDY.TXT

So unless i enter new Page Width and Length the default of 132 and 60 remains active

SETPTR ,10000,32767,,,3,BANNER ANDY.TXT,BRIEF,NFMT,NOFORMFEED

this gives me the Max Page size i can get, which as i described above with  680,000 rows still leaves me with many unwanted page breaks, in fact 6 unwanted rows, at each page break,

I made the paragraph for the report locate the  first heading line in the Holdfile then deleted the 6 unwanted rows, rinse and repeat, a PITA to setup but it got the job done.

BTW. Our Auditor insisted the detail had to come directly from the system without going via Excel. as they wanted to see the Transaction Data dump Run, they use this to randomly pick transactions they want to see the full transaction trail on......

As we will have the same Auditors next year i will do it in a program, but was pushed for time yesterday, and i believe as all the Data Dictionary's were already setup this should have been achievable in Retrieve 

So if anyone has any other useful ideas, to create holdfile output without page breaks, and without resorting to writing a program let our community know please,

Many Thanks

Andy