About Jobs

A job is a collection of SAS tasks that create output. SAS Data Integration Studio uses the metadata for each job to generate SAS code that reads sources and creates targets in physical storage.

If you want SAS Data Integration Studio to generate code for a job, you must 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 process flow diagram shows a job that reads data from a source table, sorts the data, and then writes the sorted data to a target table.

The components of this process flow perform the following functions:

SAS Data Integration Studio uses this metadata to generate SAS code that reads ALL_EMP, sorts this information, and then writes it to the EMP_SORT table. You can also include temporary output tables and Table Loader transformations in process flows. For information, see Working with Default Temporary Output Tables.

Each process in a process flow diagram is specified by a metadata object called a transformation. In the example, SAS Sort is a transformation. 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. You can specify user-written code for any transformation in a process flow diagram.

For more details about the process flow diagram in the preceding example, see Creating a Process Flow for a Job.

For all jobs except the read-only jobs that create cubes, you can specify user-written code for the entire job or for any transformation within the job. For details, see About User-Written Code.

There are four ways to run a job:

After you have submitted the job, you can use the tabs in the Details panel to check status, review warnings and errors, examine statistics, and trace the control flow of the job. For details, see About Managing Jobs.