Operational metadata

Operational metadata describes the events and processes that occur and the objects that are affected when you run a job that was created in IBM® InfoSphere® DataStage® and QualityStage®.

After you run a job, you can store and report on the following information about the job run:

Whether the job run failed or had warnings
Which database tables or files were read from, written to, or referenced
How many rows were read, written to, or referenced
When the job started and finished
Which stages and links were used
The project the job was in
The computer that the job ran on
Any runtime parameters that were used by the job
The events that occurred during the run of the job, including the number of rows written and read on the links of the job.
The invocation ID of the job
Any notes about running the job

Generating and collecting operational metadata

Before you can collect operational metadata, you must enable operational metadata either for the project that contains the job or for the job itself. Then, whenever you run that job, an XML file is created that contains the operational metadata for the job run. When you run a sequence of jobs, a separate XML file is created for each job that runs.

Because operational metadata describes the reads and writes to and from a data source, it is not generated for stages that do not directly connect to data sources. For example, a row-generator stage does not generate operational metadata.

For jobs that run on Microsoft Windows, UNIX and Linux operating systems, these XML files are saved to the xml directory on the IBM InfoSphere Information Server engine that is used to run the job.

On Windows operating systems, the XML files are saved to IBM\InformationServer\Server\DSOMD\xml.
On UNIX and Linux operating systems, the XML files are saved to opt/IBM/InformationServer/Server/DSOMD/xml.

Importing and managing operational metadata

When an XML file is saved in the xml directory, the OMDMonApp service imports the operational metadata from the file into the metadata repository, and then deletes the file from the xml directory.

You can use IBM InfoSphere Metadata Asset Manager to analyze and report on the operational metadata that you created and to ensure that the operational metadata is correctly linked to the corresponding design metadata correctly.

You can create reports for the operational metadata on the Reporting page of IBM InfoSphere Information Server Web console.