FTP Enterprise stage: Properties Tab

Use the Properties tab to specify how the FTP Enterprise stage operates.

Use the Properties tab to specify properties, which determine what the stage actually does. The available properties are displayed in a tree structure. They are divided into categories to help you find your way around them. All the mandatory properties are included in the tree by default and cannot be removed. Required properties (that is, which do not have a default value) are shown in a warning color (red by default) but change to black when you have set a value.

The following table gives a quick reference list of the properties and their attributes.

Table 1. Properties
Category/Property	Values	Default	Mandatory?	Repeats?	Dependent of
Source/URI	Pathname	N/A	Y	Y	N/A
Source/URI/Open Command	String	N/A	N	N	URI
Connection/ftp command	Pathname	ftp	N	N	N/A
Connection/ Password	Encrypted	N/A	N	Y	N/A
Connection/ User Name	String	N/A	N	Y	N/A
Options/Force Parallelism	Yes/No	No	N	N	N/A
Options/Restartable Mode	Abandon Transfer/Restart Transfer/ Restartable Transfer	Restartable Transfer	N	Y	N/A
Options/Restartable Mode/ Checkpointdir	Pathname	N/A	N	N	Restartable Mode
Options/Restartable Mode/ Job Id	Integer	1	N	N	Restartable Mode
Options/Schema file	Pathname	N/A	N	N	N/A
Options/Transfer Type	Binary/ASCII	Binary	N	N	N/A
Transfer ProtocolTransfer Mode	FTP/Secure FTP (SFTP)	FTP	N	N	N/A

Source Category

Specify URI and, if required, Open command.

URI

Is a pathname connecting the Stage to a source file on a remote host. It has the Open dependent property. You can repeat this property to specify multiple URIs, or you can use a wildcard in the path to retrieve a number of files. You can specify an absolute or a relative pathname.

The syntax for a relative path is:

ftp://host/path/filename

Where path is the relative path of the user's home directory.

The syntax for an absolute path is:

ftp://host//path/filename

While connecting to the main frame system, the syntax for an absolute path is:

ftp://host/\'path.filename\'

Open command

Is required if you perform any operation besides navigating to the directory where the file exists. There can be multiple Open commands. This is a dependent property of URI.

Connection Category

Specify the ftp Command, Password and User Name. Only one ftp command can be specified, but multiple passwords and user names can be specified.

ftp command

Is an optional command that you can specify if you do not want to use the default ftp command. For example, you could specify /opt/gnu/bin/wuftp. You can enter the path of the command (on the engine tier host) directly in this field. You can also specify a job parameter if you want to be able to specify the ftp command at run time.

User Name

Specify the user name for the transfer. You can enter it directly in this field, or you can specify a job parameter if you want to be able to specify the user name at run time. You can specify multiple user names. User1 corresponds to URI1 and so on. When the number of users is less than the number of URIs, the last user name is set for remaining URIs

If no User Name is specified, the FTP Enterprise Stage tries to use .netrc file in the home directory.

Password

Enter the password in this field. You can also specify a job parameter if you want to be able to specify the password at run time. Specify a password for each user name. Password1 corresponds to URI1. When the number of passwords is less than the numbers of URIs, the last password is set for the remaining URIs.

Transfer Protocol

Select the type of FTP service to transfer files between computers. You can choose either FTP or Secure FTP (SFTP).

FTP

Select this option if you want to transfer files using the standard FTP protocol. This is a nonsecure protocol. By default FTP Enterprise Stage uses this protocol to transfer files.

Secure FTP (SFTP)

Select this option if you want to transfer the files between computers in a secured channel. Secure FTP (SFTP) uses the SSH (Secured Shell) protected channel for data transfer between computers over a non-secure network such as a TCP/IP network. Before you can use SFTP to transfer files, you should configure the SSH connection without any pass phrase for RSA authentication.

Options Category

Force Parallelism

You can set either Yes or No. In general, the FTP Enterprise stage tries to start as many processes as needed to transfer the n files in parallel. However, you can force the parallel transfer of data by specifying this property to yes. This allows m number of processes at a time where m is the number specified in InfoSphere® DataStage® configuration file. If m is less than n, then the stage waits to transfer the first m files and then start the next m until n files are transferred.

When you set Force Parallelism to Yes, you should only give one URI.

Restartable Mode

When you specify a restartable mode of Restartable transfer, InfoSphere DataStage creates a directory for recording information about the transfer in a restart directory. If the transfer fails, you can run an identical job with the restartable mode property set to Restart transfer, which will reattempt the transfer. If the transfer repeatedly fails, you can run an identical job with the restartable mode option set to Abandon transfer, which will delete the restart directory. For more details, see Restart capability .

For get operations, InfoSphere DataStage reinitiates the FTP transfer at the file boundary. The transfer of the files that failed half way is restarted from the beginning or zero file location. The file URIs that were transferred completely are not transferred again. Subsequently, the downloaded URIs are imported to the dataset from the temporary folder path.

Restartable mode has the following dependent properties:

Job Id
Identifies a restartable transfer job. This is used to name the restart directory.
Checkpoint directory
Optionally specifies a checkpoint directory to contain restart directories. If you do not specify this, the current working directory is used.

For example, if you specify a job_id of 100 and a checkpoint directory of /home/bgamsworth/checkpoint the files would be written to /home/bgamsworth/checkpoint/pftp_jobid_100.

Schema file

Contains a schema for storing data. Setting this option overrides any settings on the Columns tab. You can enter the path name of a schema file, or specify a job parameter, so the schema file name can be specified at run time.

Transfer Type

Select a data transfer type to transfer files between computers. You can select either the Binary or ASCII mode of data transfer. The default data transfer type is binary.