Currently we are faced with a need to have Sybase data, used with OLTP databases and incremental development applications returned to the mainframe systems for additional processing and application interactions. At current, there exists no reasonable way to perform this sort of extraction. Most tools are geared toward providing access to the Mainframe data from within Sybase (or external environments, such as gateways), but to return data to the mainframe had no immediate solution.
One possible solution was to acquire Sybase's Open-Client for MVS and install it on the mainframe. The problem with this solution is that it requires the application developer to be familiar with Sybase's DB-Library and know how to program it's API in order to communicate with the SQL server. That coupled with the fact that the product is not cheap left this solution as something for a long-term idea, perhaps to be implemented at some point in the future.
To address the immediate need, something simple and usable was required. Hence, the concept of using the simple (and reliable) File Transfer Protocol (or FTP as it's commonly known) is borne.
With SQL-ftpd an ftp server has been created which acts as a front-end to the Sybase SQL server. You connect to SQL-ftpd with your standard ftp client, and issue commands, much as you would when transferring files via ftp from one system to another.