DSXchange

Hi!

I am a DataStage developer (Version 7.5) and work on Server jobs. It is a practice at my work place to use Batch Scripts in order to schedule a set of jobs instead of using a Job Sequence. I have not worked on Job Sequences and have the following clarifications.

Are Job Sequences specific to DataStage Director when it comes to scheduling?
Which is better (in terms of performance, troubleshooting, etc)? - Batch Scripts or Job Sequences?
Scheduling is done using an external tool and not through the DataStage Director. I would like to know if this why Job Sequences are not used.

Thanks in Advance
Scorp

A Batch, a job sequence or a user-written job control routine are all the same thing - the code can be viewed through the job properties. Therefore, all else being equal, there are no differences.

Job sequences can indeed be invoked by third party schedulers, via the same interface (dsjob) that you would use for a batch. The "why" is therefore to be answered by your organization. It is not a DataStage restriction.

How long has your organization used DataStage? If I had to guess, I would think it has been in use since before Sequence jobs were available and so were (as everyone was) writing their own 'Batch' jobs. And just got used to working that way, never making the 'switch' to Sequence jobs.

As Ray notes, there really isn't any difference under the covers. It's just now you've got the standard GUI to lay them out and something to write all that goofy code for you.

You can design and build sequences at a lightening rate. So it is not a lot of work to move to sequences. The restartability is better in custom batch jobs if done correctly. The restartability in Control M and some other products is even better but the level of effort to put jobs into a separate product may not be worth it. You may need to write a wrapper shell script if you go this route. Handling parameters makes all of these more difficult.