QGEN provides advanced logic capabilities for validity checking, data cleaning, recoding, merging and extraction of flat file data.

QGEN combines the power of the QUIP specification language with a rich set of logical, conditional and arithmetic operators to allow data manipulation at the field, byte or bit level as well as logical validity checking. Instructions can be used both to identify and extract cases that fail complex logical conditions and to correct the errors.

Supported data types include ASCII, EBCDIC, column-binary, packed decimal, floating point and 1/2/4-byte signed or unsigned integers. Nearly any other data type can be converted to a supported type through the extensive recode capabilities of the software, making QGEN an excellent tool for moving mainframe data to a PC environment.

Programming features include multiple increment looping, callable subroutines, skipping and branching, dictionary substitutions, table look-ups and flexible report generation.

Multiple input and output streams allow data to be merged from different sources based on common record identifiers, split into separate files or trailerized into master/detail files. Information can be cumulated or carried between records and new records created or inserted into files.

QGEN is entirely script driven from plain text specification files, with command line parameter passing and multi-level includes, making it ideal for batch operations on large data sets.

QGEN has been used as a cost-effective alternative to SQL for cleaning relational databases by exporting data to flat files and using the powerful logical capabilities of the QUIP specification language for validity checking.

The QGEN User's Guide and a fully functional demo version of QGEN are available for download .

Click here for summaries of QGEN instructions and keywords.

QGEN comes bundled with two additional programs:

QMARG creates marginal counts and frequency distributions for ASCII or column-binary data files, with flexible options for percentaging, filtering, respondent level weighting and basic statistics.

QCBEDIT is a full-screen editor for IBM 360 column-binary data files such as those often used in market research. 

Copyright 1999-2006 Jan Werner Data Processing - Last modified: October 12, 2001