scripting

tostay2003 · Post by **tostay2003** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 2:15 pm

Can anyone explain, when do we need to do scripting for datastage (in which language)? why?

PS: just know few commands of unix

ArndW · Post by **ArndW** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 2:27 pm

There is no direct scripting language in DataStage - there is a DataStage BASIC programming language and perhaps Sequences might be considered and advanced scripting language.

Why a scripting language? Hmmm... why not?

kcbland · Post by **kcbland** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 2:44 pm

Use the appropriate method to accomplish your goals. If the easist way to rename a file is thru a shell command, it's silly to write a DataStage job to read the entire file and then write it under a new name. There are reasons to do things in a shell or SQL script, just like there are reasons to use DataStage instead of custom SQL. The point is, use all of the tools at your disposal to accomplish the task, keeping in mind audit, maintenance, and performance goals.

tostay2003 · Post by **tostay2003** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 2:52 pm

Sorry ArndW for not putting my question right way. Thanks Kcbland.

Kcbland, could you please list out shell commands, which will be needed in designing datastage jobs and when will they be appropriate?

kcbland · Post by **kcbland** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 2:55 pm

There are no shell commands for designing jobs. There is a requirement for knowledge of your operating system and the methods for interacting with that environment. Moving, copying, searching, and profiling files are knowledge requirements for you as a developer. Knowing how to count a file for the number of lines is a common task. So is being able to invoke DataStage jobs from the command line. Some unix knowledge is helpful there for those not familiar with it. Also, knowing how to sort, filter, grep, cut, awk and sed files can make the difference between a simple job with a preparatory unix script/statement and a gargantuan job performing the same functions.

ray.wurlod · Post by **ray.wurlod** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 3:43 pm

The whole point of having a graphical user interface (GUI) is so that you don't need to do any code-level programming, whether scripts or in an actual programming language. You should be able to do 90%-100% of what you need to do without ever writing any code (apart from things like derivation expressions).

FWIW DataStage does have a scripting language of its own, indeed it has two. One's called the paragraph programming language (it has branching, looping, conditional execution and "variables"), the other is called PROCs (which have even more functionality, but are tedious to learn, being more like an assembler language).