David Martin asks,

> Old HP user, programmer/developer, admin is trying to clear the cobwebs and
> remember how to do all kinds of neato things with Image. Right now what I'm
> trying to find is a quick and dirty way to dump data from an Image dataset
> to an ascii flat file using tools available in MPE.

<plug for Robelle>

Call Robelle and procure thyself a copy of SUPRTOOL.  This is the quickest and
cleanest way of doing exactly this.  Of course, this is a third party product.

The less costly way to do it is to write your own program to read the datasets
and create your own files.

We swear by SUPRTOOL though -- beats writing code.  To dump a dataset to a
file, a simple set of commands such as:

>base vote99
Database password [;]?

>get d-votes
>output dvotes
>xeq
IN=1126, OUT=1126. CPU-Sec=1. Wall-Sec=1.
>

A :LISTFILE shows:

Wally: listfile dvotes,2
ACCOUNT=  CSILLC      GROUP=  PUB

FILENAME  CODE  ------------LOGICAL RECORD-----------  ----SPACE----
                  SIZE  TYP        EOF      LIMIT R/B  SECTORS #X MX

DVOTES              7W  FB        1126       1126 128       64  1  1

Note also that it took about a second to read those 1,126 records.

Another note - SUPRTOOL can work across NS links as well - to remote databases
on other machines.

Regards,
Joe