I have an application I want to transfer data to which is written in .NET. I can use send the information to the application either by using direct connection to an assembly or by using a web service interface.
I'm looking for a way to interact with the assemblies or web services from within datastage.
I tried to import the assemblies as external functions but got an error message "Error loading type library/DLL."
Can you advize me of a way I might accomplish that?
Ascential just released DataStage v7.0. It is reported to have web service functionality. I'm not sure whether this will allow you to feed data to your web service interface or not, but it's worth a try.
It can be very difficult to create a .Net application that interacts with products still using the old ActiveX architecture. The standard VB .Net application cannot create DLL files, you need to upgrade the version to get that ability and then you need to trawl through MSDN to find the instructions on how to do it. The old VB 6.0 was great at creating DLL files but Microsoft want to move away from ActiveX into web services so .Net makes it much harder.
DataStage 6 and earlier uses the old ActiveX/DLL methods. Version 7 introduces web services however this comes at an additional cost, you may want to be sitting down in a chair when you ask for this price, however it will let DataStage and .Net applications communicate and opens up a lot of opportunities.
You could also pass the information between DataStage and your .Net app via a flat file or database staging table.
The Assembly Registration tool reads the metadata within an assembly and adds the necessary entries to the registry, which allows COM clients to create .NET Framework classes transparently. Once a class is registered, any COM client can use it as though the class were a COM class. The class is registered only once, when the assembly is installed. Instances of classes within the assembly cannot be created from COM until they are actually registered.
