# Reading Adabas file

**URL:** <https://techcommunity.softwareag.com/t/reading-adabas-file/62041>\
**Category:** Forum\
**Tags:** Adabas-Natural, Natural, Natural-on-Mainframes\
**Created:** [March 8, 2007, 12:49pm UTC](https://techcommunity.softwareag.com/t/reading-adabas-file/62041 "2007-03-08T12:49:59Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Ramesh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d07c76/32.png) [@Ramesh](https://techcommunity.softwareag.com/u/Ramesh)\
**Post date:** [March 8, 2007, 12:49pm UTC](https://techcommunity.softwareag.com/t/reading-adabas-file/62041/1 "2007-03-08T12:49:59Z")

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Hi,

Can anyone help in this.

Is it possible to read a adabas file without defining view in natural pgm, since I want to read all the fileds of the file. If so Please provide some sample pgm which has reading the adabas file without defing view / provide syntax.

Thanks in Advance  
Ramesh

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**Author:** ![Steve\_Robinson](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/techcommunity/user_avatar/techcommunity.softwareag.com/steve_robinson/32/107_2.png) [@Steve\_Robinson](https://techcommunity.softwareag.com/u/Steve_Robinson)\
**Post date:** [March 8, 2007, 5:54pm UTC](https://techcommunity.softwareag.com/t/reading-adabas-file/62041/2 "2007-03-08T17:54:03Z")

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The simple answer is “no”. If you are in Structured or Mixed (structured data) Mode, you must have a view.

In strict Report Mode there is no such thing as a view. Natural “looks at” a READ or FIND loop and builds a Format Buffer that contains all the fields that are used in the loop. This is the equivalent of having a View.

So, if you actually are going to use all the fields in a record, you could write a Report Mode program and avoid creating a View. However, you may well encounter resistance to creating new programs in Report Mode.

steve

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**Author:** ![Ramesh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d07c76/32.png) [@Ramesh](https://techcommunity.softwareag.com/u/Ramesh)\
**Post date:** [March 9, 2007, 1:52pm UTC](https://techcommunity.softwareag.com/t/reading-adabas-file/62041/3 "2007-03-09T13:52:46Z")

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Thanks Steve for providing information.

Ramesh

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**Author:** ![Matthias1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc348/32.png) [@Matthias1](https://techcommunity.softwareag.com/u/Matthias1)\
**Post date:** [March 9, 2007, 2:03pm UTC](https://techcommunity.softwareag.com/t/reading-adabas-file/62041/4 "2007-03-09T14:03:41Z")

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I don’t know if this works on mainframes. But on open systems you can read out the FDT via ADAREP and use this information in connection to Adabas direct calls.

But anyway: This program would be a “dirty hack” and I wouldn’t do it without beeing forced.

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**Author:** ![system](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/techcommunity/original/3X/c/d/cd19967bb605d28a72d77eb83a1cae22f3df2eb8.svg) [@system](https://techcommunity.softwareag.com/u/system)\
**Post date:** [April 2, 2021, 2:41pm UTC](https://techcommunity.softwareag.com/t/reading-adabas-file/62041/5 "2021-04-02T14:41:06Z")

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