Converting student transcripts to PDF

A decision was taken to phase out their mainframe and move to Linux and Windows based servers. Consequently all their jobs and transcripts from several years had to be recovered and converted into a format readable on a Linux or Windows platform. Approximately 25,000 transcripts were archived in AFP and needed conversion prior to being moved to the new platform. These transcripts ranged from a few pages to several hundreds of pages and included text, Arabic fonts, colour and graphic images.

The requirement was quite straight forward. All their transcripts in AFP format should be converted into PDF. It was a one time job and the solution had to be able to support Arabic fonts and code pages.

MPI Tech’s ACM product was chosen and was licensed for the project. ACM converts AFP files into PDF that can then be stored on a different platform for archiving. ACM handles Arabic printing and is capable of transforming the AFP files into PDF at very high speed.

The project was successfully completed. AFP Conversion Module (ACM) from the MPI Tech Mainframe Output Suite was implemented. It minimised the cost of performing the one-off conversion of historic AFP data to PDF, and the time taken to perform the task was comfortably within target.