Top Ten Features In DataStage Hawk

The   IILive2005    conference   is  the  first   public   presentations  of the  functionality in the WebSphere Information    Integration   Hawk   release. Though it’s   few  years back I am sharing that I found  top Ten things I am looking forward to in DataStage Hawk:

1) The metadata server

Using MetaStage is kind of like bathing in the ocean on a cold morning. You know it's good for you but that doesn't stop it from freezing the crown jewels. MetaStage is good for ETL projects but none of the projects we've been on has actually used it. Too much effort required to install the software, setup the metabrokers, migrate the metadata, and learn how the product works and write reports. Hawk brings the common repository and improved metadata reporting and we can get the positive effectives of bathing in sea water without the shrinkage that comes with it.

2) QualityStage overhaul.

 Data Quality reporting can be another forgotten aspect of data integration projects. Like MetaStage the QualityStage server and client had an additional install, training and  implementation overhead so many DataStage  projects   did  not use   it.   I  am   looking   forward    to   more    integration    projects    using standardisation, matching and survivorship to   improve quality once these features are more accessible and easier to use.

3) Frictionless Connectivity and Connection Objects

 we've called DB2 every rude name under the sun. Not because it's a bad database but because setting up remote access takes me anywhere from five minutes to five weeks depending on how obscure the error message and how hard it is to find the obscure setup step that was missed during installation.

4) Parallel job range lookup

 If we looking forward to this one because it will stop people asking for it on forums. It looks good; it's been merged into the existing lookup form and seems easy to use. Will be interested to see the performance.

5) Slowly Changing Dimension Stage

 This is one of those things that Informatica were able to trumpet at product comparisons, that they have more out of the box DW support. There are a few enhancements to make updates to dimension tables easier, there is the improved surrogate key generator, there is the slowly changing dimension stage and updates passed to in memory lookups. That's  DBMS generated keys, only doing the keys in the ETL job from now on! DataStage server jobs have the hash file lookup where you can read and write to it at the same time, parallel jobs will have the updateable lookup.

6) Collaboration: better developer collaboration

Everyone hates opening a job and being told it is locked. Under Hawk you can open a readonly copy of a locked job plus you get told who has locked the job so you know whom to curse.

7) Session Disconnection

Accompanied   by the   metallic  cry  of  "exterminate ! exterminate !"  an  administrator  can  disconnect sessions and unlock jobs.

8) Improved SQL Builder

 Getting the SQL builder to build complex SQL is a bit like teaching a monkey how to play chess. What I do like about the current SQL builder is that it synchronises your SQL select list with your ETL column list to avoid column mismatches. I am hoping the next version is more flexible and can build complex SQL.

9) Improved job startup times

Small parallel jobs will run faster. I call it the death of a thousand cuts, your very large parallel job   takes too long to run because a thousand smaller jobs are  starting and stopping at the same time   and cutting into CPU and memory. Hawk makes these cuts less painful.

10) Common logging

 Log views that work across jobs, log searches, log date constraints, wildcard message filters, saved queries. It's all good. You no longer need to send out a search party to find an error message.

That’s top ten. We also hoping the software comes in a box shaped like a hawk and makes a hawk scream when you open it. A bit like those annoying greeting cards. Is there any functionality you think Hawk is missing that you really want to see?