DataStage Version 7 Experiences

[lebos]

We are about to embark on an upgrade to Version 7. Does anybody have any experiences that they would like to share with the rest of us?

I think any platform would be of interest, although we are on AIX 4.3.3, going to 5L, and at the same time moving from Oracle 8i to 9i.

Thanks in advance.

Larry

[vmcburney]

When you are installing optional stages the menu now has three pages to scroll to instead of two! (We missed a couple stages on our first install). There are two new stages called RowSplitter and RowMerger which are largely undocumented in 7.0. The nice people at Ascential support sent me a description that I've placed below. Make sure your developers read about all the new features, such as copy and paste of stages, as it could save them time and effort straight away.

*****************
The properties of the Row Splitter and Row Merger pretty much mimics of the sequential stage ... and have the benefit of doing "on the fly"
redefinition of meta data, without having to land to disk.

The old technique of using a sequential stage to read a row as a big block
of a thousand bytes, and then have the output link redefine the meta data
(without having to use derivations) is the primary purpose of the
RowSplitter, and RowMerger does the same thing in reverse.

In effect, it's splitting or merging the "meta data" not the row itself.

These new active stages were put in place primarily to ease the transition
for "classic" ds jobs that use this technique, into RTI (RTI cannot have a
passive stage with input "AND" output links).
*****************

[aaronej]

We moved to DataStage 7.0 shortly after it was released and we have been using it a lot since then. Overall, I am impressed. So far, the product has been stable and error free, the usability additions are great and everything is much more customizeable.

During our implementation of 7.0 we had a consultant from Ascentail Professional services in to help with any problems. He gave me a little insight in to what has and what has not changed with version 7.0. Basically, the most noticeable change is in the UI, many features have beend added to make it more user friendly, including the XP look and feel. 7.0 also give you the ability to create job templates and use these templates to create new jobs - works nice. Sadly, these templates appear to be local, and developer specific. Also, they did not give us the ability to create templates from Job Sequences.

The other thing that they really concentrated on was streamlining the backend code in the various stages. They evidently went through and rework stage code to make it more efficent and consistant.

Overall, we like it.

Later...

Aaron

[AndrewWebbUK]

<snip> He gave me a little insight in to what has and what has not changed with version 7.0. Basically, the most noticeable change is in the UI, many features have beend added to make it more user friendly, including the XP look and feel. 7.0 also give you the ability to create job templates and use these templates to create new jobs - works nice. Sadly, these templates appear to be local, and developer specific. Also, they did not give us the ability to create templates from Job Sequences.

<snip>
Aaron

as well as this its important to look at some other changes (some of which are easy to overlook! Server 'stages' can now be placed onto the Enetrprise (or parallel) canvas and run natively there.. as opposed to running in a shared container, this means that they are native parallel operations and function as such. Shared containers are now also present within the parallel canvas (something that was missing at version 6). There are new stages (some detailed above) but also new stages in the Parallel canvas and the mainframe canvas. the Mainframe side can also now support IMS sources directly.

There is a completely new XML set of Plugins for XML reading, Writing and now transforming (xsl-T can be used for changing data)

there are optional Java Stages (using a java class as a source system or target system, and transform, allowing a java class to transform data), and also optional Webservices Stages (allowing again a webservice to act as a source, traget or transformation stage)

We've also provided RTI (realtime integration) capabilities, again in the form of 2 new stages on the canvas (parallel included) allowing input and output of data from JMS, EJB (enterprise Java Beans) or Webservices bindings.

We've also added a completely new and updated MQSeries Plugin as part of the Messaging Pack, that supports Websphere MQ 5.3, allowing message filtering and many more updates based around feedback from previous customers.

There are also Intelligent Assistance for creating SCD's migration jobs, templating etc...

and they are just the changes you can see...

the RTI capabilities are really key here as well (check over in the RTI forums) and we've also updated QualityStage, ProfileStage, and Metastage... (brokers between those tools and metastage)

the lists really quite long with well over 100 new and unique features and updates within the platform...

but its nice to know you like it

[emhastr]

Have any of you evaluated Version Control 7.0? If so, could you share differences, improvements, and problems? Thanks, Ed.

[vmcburney]

They have gone for a more standard windows file explorer interface which makes it easier to browse components. The use of a folder heirarchy is good.

In some ways it is more difficult to unless you read the doco. I think the process of intialising components and selecting components for promotion is less intuitive than the old version. Sometimes you have to ferret around through the menus to find the right command.

One thing I don't like is that you can only bring components into the version control tool via right mouse click menu commands. The Open Project window, from which you select items to be loaded, has no buttons on it.

Apart from the visual changes it appears to be exactly the same product as before.

[vmcburney]

My one complaint about version 7.0 so far is that the Designer seems to have problems on sub forms on Windows XP. About once every couple days I get a stage property window which fails with a run-time and automation error, it is usually caused by the grid control. I had a job where a CFF stage is used twice by connecting two output links, but the property page would not load. I had to remove one link and add it again and it now works fine. These problems seem to be restricted to the sub form and I am able to save my job and restart the Designer so they are a minor inconvenience.

[clshore]

In 7.0 there is a 'BASIC Transformer' stage and a 'Transformer' stage, with the same icon.
I ran into a problem with the BASIC Transformer stage on Px jobs (it was on my shortcut palette somehow).
Jobs would compile OK, but fail at runtime.

Support said the BASIC Xfm ought to have worked, albeit at reduced efficiency, it's there for back compatibility with transforms using complex BASIC from previous versions. They opened a bugfix on it.

The regular Transformer (on the Repository panel under
'Stage Types/All/Processing/Transformer') works fine. All my work is new, so there's not an issue for me.

Platform is Sun Solaris with Oracle9i.

Carter Shore