Migrate from DataStage Server 7.1 to 7.5 or wait for 8?

[jgajardo]

Hello Everyone,

I am trying to find information to build a business case to migrate DataStage Server from version 7.1 to version 7.5.
We are not directly supported by Ascential (IBM now) as the software is provided through an agreement with PeopleSoft (formerly JDEdwards, now Oracle ).

What I have so far:
1) In version 7.5, IBM offers improved fault tolerance and high-availability, 24x7 operation through the SOA Editions' clustering support for Oracle, DB2, and SQLServer, reducing project risk by eliminating a single point of failure.
This does not seem to be a plus for us since we have a SAN

2) Additional certifications for Oracle10g is available with release 7.5
I thought 10g was supported through the 9i OCI available in 7.1 is this not true?

3) enhanced reporting across the suite
What does this mean?

4) a new job sequencer
I heard that the sequencer in 7.5 can do loops and its functionality was greatly improved... any specifics?

5) real-time job validation
Again was does this mean?

6) performance visualization and monitoring interfaces
How is this different from what is available in version 7.1?

Obviously Ascential (IBM) will want everyone on the same version as most of the issues (features ) have been resolved in later releases... However, in every new software release there are new *challenges*...
So the bottom line straight to the point question is...

is version 7.5 more stable than 7.1 and are the improvements worth the effort to migrate ... or should we wait for release 8.1 ? (never the be the first )

[vmcburney]

1) In version 7.5, IBM offers improved fault tolerance and high-availability, 24x7 operation through the SOA Editions' clustering support for Oracle, DB2, and SQLServer, reducing project risk by eliminating a single point of failure.
This does not seem to be a plus for us since we have a SAN

Plus you are not even using the SOA Edition and don't want to pay extra money since your PeopleSoft Edition has DataStage for free.

2) Additional certifications for Oracle10g is available with release 7.5
I thought 10g was supported through the 9i OCI available in 7.1 is this not true?

True, if your current version is working against Oracle 10 then this is irrelevent. There may be some improvements in the parallel version against Oracles parallel partitioning but this is irrelevent to your server edition version.

3) enhanced reporting across the suite
What does this mean?

Version 7.5 gave us the Generate Job Report function on the Designer menu, and the multiple generate batch script on Devnet. It gives an excellent HTML job report with a bitmap of the job and html job property tables. Version 7.5.1 hotlinked the bitmaps created by the Generate Job Report function. I think every DataStage site should have generated HTML and bitmaps of jobs for support, archiving and release documentation.

4) a new job sequencer
I heard that the sequencer in 7.5 can do loops and its functionality was greatly improved... any specifics?

I use the Set Variables Stage quite heavily, you know how in batch job code or in any programming language you want to set some local variables and use them throughout the program, well the Set Variables stage does this. Also new are Loop Start and Loop End and vastly improved checkpoint restarting. If you don't use batch job control code and you are trying to use sequence jobs then the 7.5 changes are compelling.

5) real-time job validation
Again was does this mean?

A nice gimmick but you could live without it. In older versions you don't know a stage is missing properties until you compile the job, in this version it puts a little symbol on stages that are not ready and shows some messages when you hover over the stage.

6) performance visualization and monitoring interfaces
How is this different from what is available in version 7.1?

I think they are talking about seeing row stats within the job. Again nice feature but you could live without it.

The three biggies - it is more robust, it has HTML job reporting and it has better sequence jobs.

[ray.wurlod]

Version 8 of DataStage is quite some time away - not before April 2006 at the very earliest. It's only just gone into beta testing.

[jgajardo]

Thanks for your prompt replies!

This clarifies a lot of things

We do have lots of BASIC batch job control. The code has been developed already ...
so I don't know how much help the new sequencers will be

On the other hand, HTML reporting is a very nice to have... :D
specially that we have to do sort of the same thing manually for now..

Version 7.5 being more robust is a major plus

April 2006 is only 4 months away... (I know, I know... April might mean August )

Thanks again!