How to view XML files in z/OS after being FPTed

By nature, XML files are plain, pure ASCII. I don't know enough about z/OS to understand what FTP did to your file, but it sounds like extra carriage returns and linefeeds or other meta characters may be introduced in the FTP process. The first thing you should try is to put the file inside some kind of compression package (ZIP, tar or whatever), then transfer that file and decompress it inside z/OS to restore it to its original form. That should bypass any errors that the FTP of the raw ASCII file may be introducing. Of course, you need to find a compression technology that you can use on the Windows side to compress and on z/OS to decompress. Again, because I don't know z/OS, I'm not a good source of information on that score. But since from what I read on Wikipedia, z/OS supports Unix APIs and applications, so finding something that can handle tar or gzip will address your issues. My colleague speculates that perhaps an ASCII-EBCDIC incompatibility issue may be at work here, so you might want to look into that if my suggestion doesn't work.

Beyond that, I'd recommend you take your problems to a z/OS expert and tell him you've got an ASCII/XML file you can't open. Somebody who understands the receiving end better than I do can probably offer more help and ideas.