Well my hopes are all but dashed now. I spoke to our mainframe guru, and she told me the column is a user defined data type. The first two bytes contain the length of the field in binary format, then the remaining bytes are an intermingled mix of signed packed decimal and alphanumeric data. I just don't think I can spar against that kind of data engineering. One last grasp at the proverbial straws though: is it possible to read the column bit by bit?