Bidirectional File Transfer

Bidirectional high-speed file transfer can minimize the use of mainframe resources when transferring text, printer, and data files. By using bidirectional file transfer, you can copy almost any file or directory to or from an MCP disk and a Windows disk. If the MCP disk is visible to Enterprise Server running on the Windows platform, it uses very few mainframe resources to copy a file from the MCP disk to the Windows disk. If the MCP disk is not visible to Enterprise Server, the file transfer is still typically faster than FTP.

Enterprise Server uses a command-line interface so that repetitive file transfers can be put in batch files for periodic execution. As it copies text files to a Windows disk, Enterprise Server translates EBCDIC characters to ASCII characters and inserts carriage-returns and linefeeds at the end of each line. For printer files, it inserts form feed characters at page breaks. Binary files, such as code files or container files, are copied without any translation or character insertions.

As it copies text files from a Windows disk to an MCP disk, Enterprise Server translates ASCII characters to EBCDIC characters and removes carriage-returns and linefeeds from the end of each line. The longest line in the first 4096 bytes of the file determines the MCP file’s MAXRECSIZE attribute.

Binary files created on the MCP disk will have FILESTRUCTURE = STREAM.

Before you can use bidirectional high-speed file transfer, the Unisys host must be configured using the MAKEUSER program.