DSX - April 2005

Making Production Jobs Read Only

Contributors:
Ray Wurlod, Ken Bland, Kim Duke, Craig Hulett, Vincent McBurney
April 2005

The below contribution was posted on the DSXchange FAQ Forum.

Question:
How do I make my production jobs read only?

Answer:
Protected Project
From version 7.x it is possible to make a project "protected". This makes all components in that project read only. This is the most flexible of the protection methods as it can be switched on and off.

Start the Administrator.
Highlight the project in the project list and choose Properties.
Click on the "Protect Project" button on the General properties tab.

Version Control Tool
When delivering components via the DataStage Version Control tool there is a check box on the promote confirmation form that sets the delivered components to be read only.

Note: you cannot promote successfully to a protected project in 7.x releases. You need to unprotect the project, deliver the components and protect it again.

Import and export
Some sites choose to deliver via import and export as an alternative to the Version Control tool. This provides the ability to perform administration tasks on the export files such as backup, archiving and version control. These files can also be manipulated by custom tools to change certain property values such as the read only flag on components.

Open the DSX export file.
Do a search and replace of Readonly "0" for Readonly "1"

Project Security
The way to lock-down a project is done via user groups and access granted through the DS Administrator. For a production project it is advisable to have it on a seperate server with user ids and procedures in place for secure access.

Use a system account for job processes instead of developer accounts.
Keep the user id and password secure.
Set up developers as operators only.
Perform promotions/imports and compiles via the system account.

Hack the readonly flag
This method is not recommended by Ascential and is far less robust then the other methods, it involves changing the readonly flag of components on the internal DataStage repository. The flag is set to "RO" for read only or "NRO" for not read only. Here are commands to change components to readonly:

Job designs

Code:

UPDATE DS_JOBOBJECTS SET READONLY = 'RO' WHERE READONLY = 'NRO';

Routines

Code:

UPDATE DS_ROUTINES SET READONLY = 'RO' WHERE READONLY = 'NRO';

Transforms

Code:

UPDATE DS_TRANSFORMS SET READONLY = 'RO' WHERE READONLY = 'NRO';

Data Elements

Code:

UPDATE DS_DATATYPES SET READONLY = 'RO' WHERE READONLY = 'NRO';

Table Definitions

Code:

UPDATE DS_METADATA SET READONLY = 'RO' WHERE READONLY = 'NRO';

Shared Containers

Code:

UPDATE DS_CONTAINERS SET READONLY = 'RO' WHERE READONLY = 'NRO';

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