Maintaining a Generated Transformation

Problem

You want to analyze the impact of a change to a generated transformations and perhaps update that transformation.

Solution

Before you change a generated transformation, you should run impact analysis on that transformation to see all of the jobs that might be affected by the change. After you have run impact analysis, you can make updates to the transformations.
Changes to a generated transformation can affect existing jobs that include that transformation. They can also affect any new jobs that include that transformation. Therefore, you should be very careful about any generated transformation that has been included in existing jobs. This precaution reduces the possibility that any one user makes changes to a generated transformation that adversely affects many users.

Tasks

Identify a Generated Transformation

All transformations in the Transformation tree that have this icon (Generated Transformation) are generated transformations.

Analyze the Impact of Generated Transformations

Perform the following steps to run impact analysis on a generated transformation:
  1. Find the generated transformation that you want to analyze in the Transformations tree.
  2. Right-click the transformation and click Analyze. (You can also click Analyze in the Actions menu.) The Report view of the Impact Analysis window displays, as shown in the following display.
    Impact Analysis on a Sample Generated Transformation
    Impact Analysis on a Sample Generated Transformation
The selected generated transformation is named Employee Dependent Data. The Impact Analysis window shows that the selected transformation is used in a job. You can right-click the objects in the Report view to access their properties windows and view the jobs that contain them. For a data-flow view of the impacts, click Diagram View.

Update Generated Transformations

Perform the following steps to update the source code and other properties of a generated transformation. Any change that you make to the generated transformation can affect existing jobs that contain the transformation.
  1. Access the properties window of the transformation that you want to update by double-clicking the transformation's name in the Transformations tree.
  2. Click on a tab that you want to update.
  3. Make any needed changes to the source code. Click OK to save these changes to the SAS code. The following display depicts an update to the source code of a sample transformation.
    Sample Code Tab with Updates
    Sample Code Tab with Updates
    Note: Any change that you make to the generated transformation can affect existing jobs that contain the transformation. Therefore, the warning in the following display is shown.
    Confirm Changes Warning
    Confirm Changes Warning
  4. Make any updates that are needed to the other tabs in the properties window.
  5. Click OK to save the updates and exit the transformation properties window.