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Story⚓︎

Definition⚓︎

IXF stands for “IBM eXchange Format,” and it is a file format used by IBM’s DB2 database system for data import and export operations. The IXF format provides a standardized and efficient way to exchange data between DB2 databases or between DB2 and other systems.

Context⚓︎

At work, we encountered the need to extract data from our DB2 database for analysis purposes. However, obtaining the data in a usable format proved to be a challenge. The IT department provided us with IXF files containing the exported data, but we required a solution to parse and process this data effectively.

Solution⚓︎

To address this issue, I developed a package that simplifies the parsing of IXF files. This package builds upon existing open-source projects, which proved to be valuable resources. By leveraging these projects, I was able to create a package that streamlines the parsing of IXF files and offers various output options.

Package Features⚓︎

The IXF Parser package offers the following features:

  1. Parsing IXF Files: The package allows for the parsing of IXF files, extracting the rows of data contained within.

  2. Conversion to Multiple Formats: The parsed data can be converted to different formats, including JSON, JSONLINE, CSV, Parquet and Deltalake.

  3. Support for File-Like Objects: The package supports file-like objects as input, enabling the direct parsing of IXF data from file objects.

  4. Minimal dependencies: The package has few dependencies (ebcdic, pyarrow, deltalake, chardet, typer) which are automatically installed alongside the package.

  5. CLI: Command line tool called db2ixf (Does not support Deltalake).