Cloudera Docs

Use case overview

Learn how to use NiFi to process Mainframe data encoded in the Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code (EBCDIC) scheme while building dataflows in CDP Public Cloud.

Cloudera Flow Management offers a Cloudera exclusive NiFi component designed to process Mainframe / EBCDIC encoded data. This Record Reader component can be used to convert Mainframe data into other structured formats such as JSON or Avro.

This controller service component operates under the assumption that the data has already been offloaded from the Mainframe and NiFi would retrieve the binary data files and convert them using a processor like ConvertRecord.

The Mainframe / EBCDIC data processing workflow involves:
  1. Retrieving binary files exported from the Mainframe.
  2. Converting the EBCDIC encoded data into a readable format, such as JSON.
  3. Storing or further processing the transformed data.

This use case walks you through creating a dataflow that receives files using GetFile, converts the data using the ConvertRecord processor with the help of the EBCDICRecordReader, and writes the converted data with PutFile. It gets you started with creating a basic conversion dataflow. However, if you require a different data source or target, you have various processor options in NiFi.