DSXchange

It's my understanding that the user dsadm is the designated DataStage Administrator user name in version 7.

Completely wrong. The hashed file (and not it's "hashed", not "hash") only ever contains current records. It is pre-loaded with current records and receives replacements to these.

Tip: This will happen any time you need to generate a new surrogate key for the target table.

You may find a Join stage better than a Lookup stage in this design.

istool (no final "s") is the name of the utility. It is the command line interface for Information Server Manager.

Nothing is wrong. All that's happening is that you're being alerted that (possibly unnecessary) conversions may affect performance. Use a message handler to demote these messages to informational.

Save it from the Columns tab of the Compress stage output link?

In Oracle an integer with a value of 3 will be stored as (binary) 00000000000000000000000000000011

The FTP stage types do not FTP files. They transfer file contents directly into the job design.

The hashed file only ever contains the current record. If there becomes a new current record, this OVERWRITES the previous one in the hashed file. Correct inserts and updates are directed to the target table.

The problem is definitely in the database. Whether or not you involve your DBA depends entirely on how important solving the problem is to you.

Given that you have version 8, you also have Quick Find and Advanced Find in the Designer client.

Umm... use the scroll bars in Designer?

Read about what the roles give you. The Operator role can only run released jobs and can not view jobs.

When you get to version 8 there is a Super Operator role that can run any compiled job and can view (but not edit) job designs.

Depends how your "default defaults" have been set up.