ISX file size

[wwilliamson]

I've noticed that when I export jobs into an isx file I can get radically different file sizes based on how much the jobs have been edited and how many times they've been compiled. One recent example is the isx for a product that consists of about 30 jobs. The isx was originally around 2MB, but after editing a few jobs, compiling, and exporting, the isx increased to 4MB. After a few more rounds of edit/compile/export the file had grown to over 30MB. Isx files are just archives so I opened the isx with 7-zip to try and determine which PJBs were making the isx file so large; it was the ones that I'd edited and recompiled. I also noticed that if I compiled the jobs several times without editing them that the size eventually dropped drastically. After locating the largest jobs I recompiled them about five times each and my last isx file is back down in the 3MB range.

[wwilliamson]

I've noticed that the isx size reduction only happens when using the DataStage Designer compiler. I had an isx that had steadily grown to 28 MB and did not reduce in size at all after running the multi-job compile abut a dozen times. So I opened the isx using 7-zip and determined which job was the largest, and compiled it in Designer about five times. This last step reduced the unpacked size of the job from 20MB to around 1MB.

[qt_ky]

Interesting find. That all seems very odd and confusing. Is there any chance the isx file was being appended?

What version are you on? Were you running the export on the Client tier only? Is IBM aware of the issue?

[wwilliamson]

IIS 9.1. I run the exports using ISM from my laptop. My laptop only has the clients installed.

[qt_ky]

Cool. I had simul-edited my post to ask a few more questions...