Chapter 9: Introduction to SAS ETL Studio Jobs

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Overview of Jobs

After you have entered metadata for sources and targets, you are ready to load the targets in a data warehouse or data mart. This chapter gives an overview of SAS ETL Studio jobs. Use the general steps in this chapter, together with the examples that are described in the next chapter, to load targets in your data warehouse or data mart.

What Is a Job?

In SAS ETL Studio, a job is a metadata object that specifies processes that create output. SAS ETL Studio uses each job to generate or retrieve SAS code that reads sources and creates targets on a file system.

Jobs with Generated Source Code

If you want SAS ETL Studio to generate code for a job, you define a process flow diagram that specifies the sequence of each source, target, and process in a job. In the diagram, each source, target and process has its own metadata object.

For example, the following display shows the diagram for a job that will read data from a source table called STAFF, sort the data, then write the sorted data to a target table called Staff Sorted.

click to expand
Display 9.1: Simple Process Flow Diagram

In the display, each round object represents the metadata for a table, and each square object represents the metadata for a process. Given the direction of the arrows in the previous process flow diagram, STAFF specifies metadata for the source table. SAS Sort specifies metadata for the sort process. Loader specifies metadata for a process that loads data into the target table, Staff Sorted. The Staff Sorted object specifies metadata for the Staff Sorted table.

Each process in a process flow diagram is specified by a metadata object called a transformation. In the previous display, SAS Sort and Loader are transformations. A transformation specifies how to extract data, transform data, or load data into data stores. Each transformation that you specify in a process flow diagram generates or retrieves SAS code.

Jobs with User-Written Source Code

SAS ETL Studio enables you to do the following:

  • Specify user-written code for an entire job or a transformation within a job. For a summary of this task, see "Creating Jobs That Retrieve User-Written Code" on page 116.

  • Drag a User-Written Code transformation template from the Process Library and drop it into the process flow diagram for a job. You can then update the default metadata for the transformation so that it specifies the location of user-written program. For an overview of the Process Library and its transformation templates, see "Process Library Tree" on page 107.

  • Use the Transformation Generator wizard to create your own SAS code transformation templates and add them to the Process Library. After a transformation template has been added to the Process Library, you can drag and drop it into any job. For a description of this wizard, see "Transformation Generator Wizard" on page 112.

The online Help for SAS ETL Studio provides additional information about working with user-written components. To display the relevant Help topics, do the following:

  1. From the SAS ETL Studio menu bar, select Help Contents. The online Help window displays.

  2. In the left pane of the Help window, select SAS ETL Studio Task Reference Maintaining Jobs User-Written Components and SAS ETL Studio.

Jobs Must Be Executed

After you have defined the metadata for a job, you can submit the job for execution. Until you do that, the targets (output tables) might not exist on the file system. For a description of this task, see "Running a Job" on page 120.

Jobs Can Be Scheduled

If the appropriate software has been installed, you can deploy a SAS ETL Studio job for scheduling. After a job is deployed, an administrator can use SAS Management Console to schedule the job to run at a specified date and time or when a specified event occurs.

In SAS Management Console, administrators create and schedule groups of jobs, called flows. Each job within a flow can be triggered to run based on a certain time, the state of a file on the file system, or the status of another job within the flow. Platform Computing's Load Sharing Facility (LSF) is used to schedule the job.

Note

The Schedule Manager plug-in to SAS Management Console uses Platform JobScheduler to schedule deployed jobs. However, if you select and deploy these jobs to any workspace server location, they then will be written out to a SAS program file in a directory that you specify. Then you can schedule them with any scheduler. These alternative scheduling processes that do not use Platform JobScheduler are not supported by SAS Technical Support.

The online Help for SAS ETL Studio provides details about deploying and scheduling jobs. Perform these steps to display the relevant Help topics in SAS ETL Studio:

  1. From the SAS ETL Studio menu bar, select Help Contents. The online Help window displays.

  2. In the left pane of the Help window, select SAS ETL Studio Task Reference Maintaining Jobs Deploying a Job for Scheduling.

For scheduling setup and installation, administrators should see the SAS ETL Studio chapter in the SAS Intelligence Platform: Planning and Administration Guide.

For details about using the Schedule Manager plug-in to SAS Management Console, see the online Help for the Schedule Manager. See also the Managing Job Schedules chapter in the SAS Management Console: User's Guide.



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SAS Institute - SAS 9.1.3 ETL Studio. User's Guide
SAS 9.1.3 ETL Studio: Users Guide
ISBN: 1590476352
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2004
Pages: 127
Authors: SAS Institute

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