DSXchange

I inherited some jobs that were built under version 7.5 but now we're running v8. In each job, the lookup stages do not send rejects down a reject link. Instead, a transformer stage parses the rejects after the lookup stage and sends the rejects down a link using stage variables.

Was there a bug in past versions of DataStage that prevented the lookup stage from correctly rejecting records? Is this a best practice that I should continue in new jobs or is it safe to use the built-in lookup reject functionality?

There was no such bug. The problem would appear to have been between the keyboard and that job's developer's chair.

Thanks Ray. Maybe it was just done to add an extra description of the lookup failure like "Department Code Not Found". Is there another way to add a reject description from the Lookup stage?

No there isn't. In parallel jobs it's one stage, one task. That sounds like a good reason to process through a Transformer stage. Of course that Transformer stage (or a Column Generator stage) could appear on the reject link from the Lookup stage.