We are currently running Db2 V 7.1 for z/OS and client wants to move production data to an DB2 V 8.1 AIX box for testing. The ultimate goal is to put the decision support system on AIX.

The largest table is 690 GB split into 171 partitions. Because of security issues, I believe we are going to have to push the data to the AIX server. My question is what format do I unload it in. I have been told IXF format is best but I find no documentation if you can actually do that from MVS directly.

My piece of this work is just to get the data to the AIX box, so our intent would be to ftp the unload files if I can get them in a format that works for DB2 for AIX.

Any assistance would be really appreciated.

I suppose you have DB2 ESE installed in the AIX box. Here is the steps:

1. catalog z/OS database as remote_db to your AIX DB instance
2. from AIX, connect to remote_db
3. run export from AIX while connected to remote_db. File format shohld be IXF.
5. create DB/tables on AIX
4. import to AIX DB with option INSERT

Hope this helps.

You can do any file format as you wish. What you need to watch out for if you do decide to do a delimited is pick the delimiter that is for sure is not part of the data. And then let AIX DBA's know what it is.

We mostly load del files that are provided by our developers that came from z/OS into AIX.

Well, I think to export from z/OS, only IXF is supported.