NASA: Automating Mainframe Data Conversion with TextPipe Pro

The Challenge

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center manages vast quantities of scientific telemetry and mission data stored on legacy mainframe systems in EBCDIC format with complex COBOL copybook layouts. As the agency modernised its data infrastructure to support cloud-based analytics platforms, engineers faced a critical bottleneck: converting decades of archived mainframe records into formats compatible with modern data pipelines. Manual conversion was error-prone, extremely time-consuming, and could not keep pace with the volume of files requiring daily processing. The team needed an automated solution capable of handling packed decimal fields, variable-length records, and multi-format output without custom development for each data structure encountered.

The Solution

NASA deployed TextPipe Pro as the core engine in their mainframe-to-cloud data pipeline. TextPipe Pro reads COBOL copybook definitions directly, automatically mapping field layouts including packed decimal, zoned decimal, and binary integer fields. The platform converts EBCDIC-encoded records to ASCII, unpacks compressed numeric fields, and outputs clean CSV or JSON suitable for ingestion into cloud data warehouses. Engineers configured reusable filter sets for each data structure, which TextPipe Pro executes in batch mode via Windows Task Scheduler. Integration with FileWatcher enables automatic triggering when new mainframe export files arrive, creating a fully hands-off processing pipeline that runs around the clock without operator intervention.

Results

Products Used

• TextPipe Pro — Mainframe EBCDIC-to-ASCII conversion, COBOL copybook parsing, data transformation
• FileWatcher — Automated triggering of batch conversion when new files arrive