Making parts of your job design reusable

You can use containers to make parts of your job design reusable.

A container is a group of stages and links. Containers enable you to simplify and modularize your job designs by replacing complex areas of the diagram with a single container stage.

Containers are available in parallel jobs and server jobs.

IBM® InfoSphere® DataStage® provides two types of container:

• Local containers. These are created within a job and are only accessible by that job. A local container is edited in a tabbed page of the job's Diagram window. Local containers can be used in server jobs or parallel jobs. Their main use is to 'tidy up' a job design.
• Shared containers. These are created separately and are stored in the Repository in the same way that jobs are. They can be inserted into job design. There are two types of shared container:
  • Server shared container. Used in server jobs (can also be used in parallel jobs).
  • Parallel shared container. Used in parallel jobs.

    You can also include server shared containers in parallel jobs as a way of incorporating server job functionality into a parallel stage.

In a server job, all of columns that are supplied by a local or a shared container stage must be used by the stage that follows the container in the job.

In a parallel job, all of columns that are supplied by a server shared container stage must be used by the stage that follows the container in the job.

In a parallel job, a subset of the columns that are supplied by a parallel shared container or a local container can be used by the stage that follows the container in the job.