Simplify Efficient & Secure File Exchange and Archiving.

Connect/ZIP delivers an industry-leading compression ratio of up to 95%, significantly reducing file sizes for optimal storage and faster data transfers. This exceptional compression efficiency means that a 100 MB file can be compressed to as little as 5 MB, enabling cost-effective use of mainframe resources, streamlined workflows, and seamless handling of large datasets across platforms like z/OS, USS, and others.

Connect/ZIP provides a comprehensive set of ZIP file maintenance features designed to efficiently manage archive contents. The utility supports key operations including ADD, which inserts new files into an existing ZIP archive, and UPDATE, which replaces files in the archive if newer versions are provided. The FRESHEN feature selectively updates only those files already present in the ZIP that have changed, leaving untouched files as-is. With COPY, users can duplicate files from one ZIP archive to another without extracting them, streamlining the transfer of archive contents. Lastly, DELETE enables precise removal of specified files from the ZIP archive, allowing for clean and controlled archive management. Together, these functions make Connect/ZIP a powerful tool for maintaining and streamlining ZIP file operations.

Connect/ZIP offers robust security for ZIP archives through its AES Password Encryption feature, ensuring sensitive data remains protected during storage and transfer. This feature supports industry-standard Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) encryption with password protection, allowing users to secure ZIP files using 128-bit or 256-bit encryption levels. When enabled, each file within the ZIP is individually encrypted, ensuring comprehensive protection. The encryption process is fully integrated into ZIP operations such as ADD or UPDATE, requiring only the specification of a secure password. This makes Connect/ZIP ideal for environments where data confidentiality and compliance are critical, providing strong, reliable protection without sacrificing usability or performance.

Connect/ZIP supports the ZIP64 format, enabling seamless handling of large files and archives that exceed the traditional ZIP file limits. With ZIP64, users can compress and store files larger than 4 GB and create archives containing more than 65,535 entries, overcoming the size and file count restrictions of standard ZIP formats. This feature is especially valuable in enterprise environments where large datasets and high-volume file packaging are common. Connect/ZIP automatically activates ZIP64 support when needed, requiring no manual configuration, and ensures full compatibility with modern ZIP64-aware tools and systems. This makes it a reliable solution for large-scale ZIP file creation and management.

Connect/ZIP includes support for UNICODE encoding, ensuring accurate representation of international or non-ASCII characters. This feature enables seamless archiving and extraction of data in languages such as Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, or accented European characters, preserving their original format across platforms. When UNICODE support is enabled, Connect/ZIP automatically encodes data using UTF-8, ensuring compatibility with modern ZIP utilities and operating systems. This capability is essential for global organizations managing multilingual datasets, providing a reliable and standards-compliant solution for international ZIP archives.

Connect/ZIP ensures the reliability and integrity of archived data through its built-in CRC32 integrity check feature. During compression and extraction, each file is assigned a CRC32 (Cyclic Redundancy Check) value—a 32-bit checksum that verifies the file’s content has not been altered or corrupted. When a ZIP file is accessed or processed, Connect/ZIP automatically recalculates and compares the CRC32 values to confirm data accuracy. For improved performance, mainframe CRC-check operations are offloaded to zEDC hardware if available, accelerating verification while reducing CPU overhead. This ensures that users can trust the integrity of their archived files, whether they are stored locally or transferred across systems. The CRC32 feature is fully integrated and operates transparently, providing a critical layer of error detection without requiring user intervention—making Connect/ZIP a dependable and performance-optimized choice for secure, verifiable ZIP file management.

Connect/ZIP offers a powerful wild-card file selection and renaming feature that enhances flexibility and efficiency when managing files within ZIP archives. Users can specify files for inclusion, exclusion, or renaming using the familiar wildcard character *, allowing for pattern-based selection across large datasets. For example, *.txt can be used to select all text files, or data*.csv to match files with variable characters. Additionally, Connect/ZIP supports wildcard-based renaming, enabling users to transform file names during the ZIP process—for instance, adding prefixes, changing extensions, or restructuring paths dynamically. This capability streamlines batch processing, simplifies automation, and reduces manual effort, making it ideal for complex or large-scale ZIP file operations.

Connect/ZIP includes built-in SMTP and FTP clients, enabling seamless integration of ZIP file handling with automated delivery and transfer workflows. With the SMTP client, users can directly email ZIP archives as attachments. Customizable email options—including subject lines, body text, and multiple recipients—make it easy to automate reporting or data delivery tasks. The integrated FTP client allows ZIP files to be uploaded or downloaded to and from remote servers. This built-in capabilities eliminate the need for external tools or manual steps, streamlining end-to-end file compression, distribution, and transfer processes. Connect/ZIP’s Fast Internet Transport (FIT) hybrid TCP/UDP file transfer can be employed to improve transfer speed and efficiency in high-latency situations.

Connect/ZIP features a built-in PDF converter that allows users to seamlessly convert text files and JES spool reports into high-quality, searchable PDF documents. Leveraging the product’s robust mainframe JES integration, users can access and select JES output directly, then automatically convert selected reports into PDF format as part of the ZIP process. The converter preserves formatting, supports headers, footers, and pagination, and ensures consistent output across different report types. This functionality is especially useful for archiving, distribution, and compliance, enabling organizations to standardize report formats while compressing them efficiently. By combining PDF conversion with ZIP compression, Connect/ZIP streamlines report packaging and delivery within workflows—eliminating the need for external formatting tools.

Connect/ZIP includes a powerful file system monitoring feature that enables automated ZIP processing based on real-time file activity. This capability allows users to configure the system to watch specific datasets, directories, or paths for changes such as file creation, updates, or deletions. When predefined conditions are met—such as the arrival of a new file or the update of a specific report—Connect/ZIP can automatically trigger ZIP operations like compression, encryption, transfer, or email delivery. This event-driven automation streamlines workflows, reduces manual intervention, and supports timely processing of critical data. Ideal for batch jobs, scheduled reporting, or data handoffs between systems, the file system monitoring feature enhances operational efficiency and responsiveness.

Connect/ZIP runs natively in both z/OS and Unix System Services (USS) environments, providing full-featured ZIP file management across the entire z/OS platform. Not only does it operate directly within both environments, but it also enables cross-environment access, allowing z/OS to read, compress, and extract USS files, and USS-based processes to handle traditional z/OS datasets such as sequential, PDS, and PDSE files. This bi-directional access eliminates the need for manual file transfers or intermediate steps, streamlining workflows and simplifying operations in hybrid applications. With Connect/ZIP, users can perform ZIP operations seamlessly across both file systems from either environment—making it an ideal solution for modern, integrated mainframe workloads.

Connect/ZIP fully supports zEDC (zEnterprise Data Compression) hardware acceleration, enabling significantly faster compression and decompression of datasets on z/OS. By leveraging the built-in zEDC processors, the product performs high-speed data compression natively, reducing CPU usage and improving overall system efficiency. If zEDC hardware is unavailable, Connect/ZIP automatically defaults to software compression on zIIP, helping to minimize general-purpose (GP) processor overhead and maintain strong performance. This seamless integration of hardware and software compression ensures optimal throughput while preserving full compatibility with standard ZIP formats. The zEDC and zIIP support make Connect/ZIP especially effective in high-volume environments seeking faster processing and cost savings.

Connect/ZIP offers seamless JES Writer integration, enabling direct access to JES spool files for efficient ZIP processing within z/OS environments. This feature allows users to select, compress, convert, and manage JES output—such as job logs and reports—without intermediate steps or manual extraction. By integrating tightly with JES, Connect/ZIP can automate ZIP compression of spool content, support conversion to PDF, and facilitate secure distribution or archiving of job output. This direct JES Writer access streamlines workflows, reduces processing time, and improves operational efficiency by eliminating the need for separate spool export utilities. The integration is fully native to z/OS JES2 and JES3 systems, making it a robust solution for managing spool data in enterprise mainframe workflows.

Connect/ZIP includes a specialized feature for storing mainframe file attributes within the ZIP archive, enabling precise preservation of dataset characteristics such as record format, logical record length, block size, and dataset organization. When unzipping files back to the mainframe, Connect/ZIP uses this stored metadata to perform dynamic allocation automatically, ensuring that datasets are recreated with the correct attributes without manual intervention. This capability guarantees integrity and usability of restored files, streamlines batch and automated workflows, and reduces errors caused by incorrect dataset definitions. By embedding mainframe-specific file information directly into the archive, simplifies the management of complex dataset structures within z/OS environments.