Documentation
Documentation
This page summarises all the documents we offer for download in tabular form.
Education
This excel sheet is used to record key points for a FLAM training course.
|
FLAM Education Service - Customer needs |
FL5 Manuals
Here you can find the new generated manuals. They describe the use of our utilities, but since the same parameter strings are also used for the APIs and subsystems and other generally applicable things (e.g. the ‘Input output name mapping’) are described here, these documents are the basis for the entire FLAM infrastructure.
|
FLCL Manual (for all platforms) The Frankenstein-Limes-Command-Line (FLCL) is a standardised, cross-platform command line that provides the options of the FLUC, FLAM and FLIES subroutines as part of the FL5 infrastructure via various commands. It uses the CLE/P to provide corresponding built-in functions in addition to the commands (CONV, COMP, DECO, CHNG, FIND, ARCHIVE, ...). The FLCL therefore offers extensive interactive help for every command. It is possible to generate the entire manual or parts of it. Each parameter of a command can be pre-assigned via property files so that it does not have to be entered. The parameters can be specified directly or via a parameter file. Different configurations can be differentiated via OwnerIDs. This means that FLCL is multi-client capable. Local environment variables can be defined that are only valid for the execution of the commands. Finally, the tracing of the CLP and the commands can be controlled. All these functionalities are available across all platforms, which is an enormous relief, especially on the host. In addition to all commands, the basic functions and capabilities as well as the API strings and data formats are described, making this manual a basic reference for FLAM. |
|
|
FLAM4 Manual (for all platforms) The new FLAM4 command provides a subset of the FLCL in which the FLAM command of the FLCL is executed as a standard command and in which all important information from the old FLAM4 manuals is contained. This manual contains the description of the FLAM4 components and replaces the old documents, which are still available for download below. |
|
|
FLCC Manual (for all platforms) The Frankenstein-Limes Control Centre (FLCC) is a Qt-based interface that offers various perspectives/views. Firstly, the so-called GUI Commander was implemented. It enables command line calls and property files to be created with the help of a user interface. All man pages and help texts for each parameter and command are displayed, so that an interactive manual is available at the same time. This will be followed by a classic file management view (GUI explorer), with which files can be converted (FLUC), compressed and decompressed (FLAM) and compressed and encrypted FLAM archives (FLIES) can be managed using drag & drop. FLCC is the graphical counterpart to FLCL and therefore also provides the functionalities of the FLUC, FLAM and FLIES sub-programmes. |
|
|
FKM5 Manual (for all platforms) The FLAM Key Management Extension (FKME) is the link between the cryptographic protection mechanisms in FLAM (confidentiality, integrity and completeness), various cryptographic infrastructures (KMIP, x509-PKI, FINPIN, ...) and various architectures of Hardware Security Modules (HSM (IBM-CCA/ICSF, PKCS#11, ...)) in order to realise professional key management for FLAM and thus to be able to control access to the data. Of course, FLAM also supports protection using a simple passphrase or an internal constant as a key, but professional key management solutions are realised via this service provider interface, which is available from version 5 of FLAM. |
|
|
FKME Manual (for all platforms) The old FLAM Key Management Extension (FKME) is still supported, serves the same purpose as described above and is available from version 4 of FLAM. |
FL5 API Specifications
The interface specifications are written for the C programming language. For C++ and Java we provide corresponding classes (e.g. Stream) and for PLI, COBOL and HLAS the analogue standard load modules without return value (this becomes the first parameter in the list). All parameters are call by reference, whereby an additional length field must be specified for the strings, as it is unusual to work with zero-terminated strings in these languages.
|
FLAM Subprogram (or all platforms) The FLM5-UP is a platform-neutral DLL that provides the commands for the FLCL primarily for C and C++. |
|
FLAM Subprogram (mainframe load module) This FLM5-UP is a platform-neutral loading module that provides the commands for the FLCL primarily for PLI and COBOL. |
|
FLUC Subprogram (for all platforms) The FLUC-UP is a platform-neutral DLL that provides the FLUC commands for the FLCL. |
|
|
FLUC Subprogram (mainframe load module) This FLUC-UP is a platform-neutral load module that provides the commands for the FLCL primarily for PLI and COBOL. |
|
|
FLUC Byte Interface (for all plattforms) The byte interface (access method) is based on the element interface of FLUC and enables sequential, byte-by-byte access to original data stocks, as is common for file I/O in the PC world (fooen, fread, fwrite, fclose). All of FLAM's conversion options are available when reading and writing the original data. This means that, for example, transparent UTF-16LE with 0x0A00 as the delimiter can be read byte by byte, even though the data originates from a member of a linked GZIP file that is encrypted and BASE64-encoded on a local hard drive or a third-party system (cloud/HOST/DMZ) and whose plain text was actually encoded in Latin1 and terminated with 0x0D0A. |
|
|
FLUC Byte Interface for C++ Streams (for all platforms) This interface extends the standard stream objects in C++ with constructors that provide the FLUC capabilities for processing streams. For example, modern applications can easily process old host data records or realise complex conversions to streams. |
|
|
FLUC Byte Interface for Java (for all platforms) This interface extends the standard stream objects in Java with constructors that provide the FLUC capabilities for processing streams and offers its own class library for very complex conversions. This enables Java applications, for example, to allocate host data records in all variants and describe them in classic record formats. The class library is based on a JNI DLL and is available as a addon for download . |
|
|
FLUC Record Interface (mainframe load module) The record interface for original data (access method) is based on the byte interface of the FLUC and enables sequential access in the form of records (length and data) to original data sets, as is usual for file I/O in the mainframe world (GET/PUT for COBOL or PL1). The datasets can be read or written locally or remotely and all the conversion options of FLAM are available when reading and writing original data. This means that, for example, records in EBCDIC IBM-1141 can be read transparently, even though the data originates from a member of a linked GZIP file that is encrypted and BASE64-encoded on a local disc or a remote system (cloud/HOST/DMZ) and whose plain text in XML or JSON was actually UTF-16LE-encoded and terminated with 0x0D000A00. |
|
|
FLUC iconv Interface (for all platforms) This module provides a libiconv-compatible interface for memory-to-memory character conversion. All functions of the FLUC character conversion module are available via the TO and FROM strings of the fliconv_open() function. |
|
|
FLAM4 Record Interface (Windows, Unix, MF-EDZ) The data record interface (access method) is the centrepiece of FLAM4 and its predecessor versions. It is used to write and read FLAMFILEs. It is the basis for converting original files into ‘flamed’ datasets using the FLAM utility, subroutine or subsystem. It represents the access method to compressed and encrypted files for individual data records. Applications can use this interface (API) to write data to a FLAMFILE, search for it and read it out again, regardless of the platform. The implementation is analogue to the file IO of normal record-oriented files, so that the adaptation effort for applications on mainframe systems is minimal. |
|
|
FLAM4 Subprogram Interface (Windows, Unix, z/OS) The FLAM subroutine uses the FLAM record interface (version 4) to transfer various types of original files to a FLAMFILE (archive) or to restore original files according to the respective file format of the target system. The UP module thus provides the capabilities of the old FLAM4 utility for integration into applications. |
|
|
FLAM Command Line Executer and Parser We developed the FLAM CLE/P because we could not find a ready-made library that would fulfil our requirements for a uniform command line on all platforms. We therefore decided to write a corresponding compiler whose semantics are controlled via tables and which converts property file and command line input into a computer-processable, arbitrarily deeply nested data structure. The result is a very powerful tool whose documentation can be viewed here. The entire interface documentation, the programming reference, the GIT repository and the licence can be found at library download . The CLP/E is made freely available to everyone as open source on the basis of a Zlib-based licence in the form of a GIT project. |
FL5 SPI Spezifikationen
Service Provider Interfaces (SPI) are interfaces with which users can extend the functionalities of FLAM themselves. This is used to realise specific connections, e.g. to cryptographic infrastructures, to carry out pre- and post-processing for data. to integrate virus scanners and much more. The functions to be fulfilled are language-independent and are dynamically loaded as DLL/SO or load module at runtime.
|
FLAM5 Column Processing Exit This service provider interface offers our customers the option of integrating their own algorithms and procedures per column into the table support. This enables, for example, the integration of their own encryption or anonymisation procedures when accessing the data per column. |
|
|
FLAM5 Anti Virus Exit This interface enables our customers to integrate any type of antivirus software into FLM. Corporate licences from AV manufacturers usually offer an API that can be used here to integrate this virus scanner into FLAM. By default, FLAM comes with integration with ClamAV, where the server must be available in the network. |
|
|
FLAM4 Key Management Exit The FLAM Key Management Extension (FKME) is the link between the cryptographic protection mechanisms in FLAM (confidentiality, integrity and completeness), the various cryptographic infrastructures (KMIP, x509-PKI, FINPIN, ...) and the various architectures of Hardware Security Modules (HSM (IBM-CCA/ICSF, PKCS#11, ...)) in order to realise professional key management for FLAM and thus to be able to control access to the data. Here you can find the specification of the Service Provider Interface in FLAM Version 4. |
Old FLAM4 manuals
Old FLAM4 manualsThe old FLAM4 manuals are no longer maintained as of version 5.1.22, but can still be downloaded here in unchanged form. The contents of the old manuals have been replaced by the FLM4 Manual, the FLAM4 Record Interface Specification, the FLAM4 Subprogram Interface, the FKME User Manual and the respective platform-specific ‘install.txt’.
|
FLAM4 Windows manual |
|
|
FLAM4 Unix manual |
|
|
FLAM4 z/OS manual |
|
|
FLAM4 z/OS Subsystem |
|
|
FLAM4 z/VSE manual |
de (pdf) |
|
FLAM4 BS2000/OSD manual |
de (pdf) |
|
AES & FLAM |
HowTos
The following simple integration of FLAM4 in Java and other modern high-level languages will be replaced with version 5 by the much more powerful FLUC byte interface. The new byte interface is also available via the network, which makes it possible to read and write FLAMFILEs via an IO stream from an Enterprise Environment (JavaEE). For customers who continue to use only FLAM4, we would like to continue to provide the following descriptions.
|
Integration of FLAM4 in Java |
|
|
Integration of FLAM4 in Visual Basic |
|
|
Integration of FLAM4 in Visual C |
|
|
Integration of FLAM4 in Visual C++ |