I posted as "other" because I was an employee of VMark Software then Ardent Software then Informix then IBM. I learned DataStage by preparing to teach classes and by providing technical support for the product.
IBM Software Services Group
Any contribution to this forum is my own opinion and does not necessarily reflect any position that IBM may hold.
I voted #1 as that was where it all started. Of course there's been plenty of self-study over the years but classes from Ardent / Ascential and Informix were the foundation. Oh, and for RTI there was #4.
-craig
"You can never have too many knives" -- Logan Nine Fingers
I took both beginner and advance courses through IBM and I still learn more through trial and error. It has been a frustrating learning process and there is very limited knowledge in Canada. I know that IBM want to gain a bigger market but they will need to provide better support. Thank god this forum exists as it is the most valuable way to retrieve information.
Hopefully, this product takes off as there are limited jobs in Canada.
Raftsman - for a while (during my wait for my US visa) I was working out of the Toronto office and we had a number of early adopters including Shoppers Drug Mart and I thought that the DS market was doing quite well. Then again, it has been a couple of years... Or are you referring to the Francophone parts of Canada and product support in French?
ArndW, I am located in Ottawa, Ontario. There are only 3 or 4 Datastage shops. Mostly, Server. I hooked up with a contract with the EE version. What worries me is that when the contract ends, I will have limited opportunities to continue with this product unless more departments jump on the bandwagon. I chose to leave a permanent position on the premise that IBM would be able to gain market share. Let hope they can otherwise, I may need to travel to find work. It is a gamble but so far so good.
I have been working in Mainframes and then moved to datastage when a conversion project came up. This project was to migrate mainframe code to datastage. I was given training but ended up preparing design documents by analysing mainframe code. This was frustrating.
Eventhough I got datastage training , I got to touch it 8 months after training. By that time , I was all away from the basics. Had to depend on some datastage experts in the team for the start up.