asdbget README
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asdbget is a program to retrieve database files (and their corresponding 
layouts) from the AS/400 databse filesystem.  It does so via the FTP protocol.

The file layout isn't part of the file, and some, uh, interesting tactics are
used to obtain the file layout.  The AS/400 FTP server implements the RCMD
command, which allows a logged-in user to execute AS/400 commands via the FTP
client.  We run the DSPFFD command and redirect the output to a file in QTEMP,
then retrieve this file and build a file layout in memory on the fly.  This
means that we depend on the structure of the files generated by the DSPFFD
command, which hopefully is the same on all AS/400s.

The output format is XML.  After mucking with a few possible output file
formats, I decided that simple utility programs using the expat or gnome-xml
parsers can generate any needed file format from the XML, and that keeps this
utility simple and to-the-point.  At least with expat, you can parse documents
on the fly via piping if you're worried about disk space.

Any bugs, comments, or suggestions can be emailed to me at:
jasonf@cleveland.lug.net

Enjoy,
-Jay 'Eraserhead' Felice
