AHLSORT

One engine for sort, merge, join and transform

A full-function sort and data manipulation utility for Linux and Windows, modeled on IBM DFSORT and Syncsort MFX, and optimized for very large volumes.

What it does

Everything a mainframe sort step does, on commodity hardware.

Sort and merge

Order records on any combination of keys, or merge any number of pre-sorted files.

Join

Match records across files with JOINKEYS and REFORMAT, including files in different formats.

Select and summarize

Include, omit and summarize records with the conditional logic your jobs already contain.

Reformat and report

Rebuild records, convert data types, translate EBCDIC and ASCII, and produce headers, trailers and sections.

Compatibility

The aim is simple: your existing statements run without change. Where a DFSORT option is not yet supported, we tell you up front.

Control statementsSORT, MERGE, OPTION, RECORD, INCLUDE, OMIT, INREC, OUTREC, OUTFIL, SUM, ALTSEQ, JOINKEYS, JOIN, REFORMAT, MODS
DFSORT featuresIFTHEN, BUILD, OVERLAY, PARSE, FINDREP, SEQNUM, date functions, OUTFIL splitting, HEADER, TRAILER and SECTIONS report writing
UtilitiesDFSORT ICETOOL and SYMNAMES
Syncsort MFXMFX control statement syntax, including SORTSUM and XSUM
User exitsDFSORT-style E15 and E35 exits for processing before and after the sort
Record formatsF, FB, V, VB and IBM-V, plus text and delimited files
Data typesEBCDIC, ASCII, packed decimal (COMP-3), zoned decimal, binary and the other IBM mainframe types, with packed decimal arithmetic and EBCDIC constants

Platforms and integration

  • Linux and Windows, plus Unix platforms
  • Linux on IBM Z and LinuxONE, so mainframe shops can move sort off z/OS without leaving the hardware
  • Delivered as a single compact executable
  • Run from the command line or your job scheduler
  • Java and C/C++ APIs to call it from your own applications
  • Micro Focus Enterprise Server: AHLJSORT services JCL sort calls and can act as an alias for SORT
  • Virtual machines, containers and cloud instances
Network cabling in a data centre

Built for batch that has to be right

A sort engine sits under everything else, so it has to be predictable. AHLSORT is deterministic: the same input gives the same output every time.

One code base for every client, tested against a suite of around two thousand automated tests before each release.

See it on your own jobs

Bring a representative job and its data. Our engineers will help you compare the results.

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