Test Center Daily | InfoWorld Staff » Preview: ActiveBatch 6.0's new tools make its good job-scheduling software better

May 17, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Preview: ActiveBatch 6.0's new tools make its good job-scheduling software better

TAGS: Preview

ActiveBatch 6.0 is going GA soon, and it boasts some impressive enhancements added since my review of the previous version. There are actually too many to talk about here, but I'll highlight my favorites.

I ask myself one question each time I pick up a new tool: does it actually save you any real time? Of all ActiveBatch 6.0's features, the new built-in job library is the one that will not only save you time in your day-to-day work, but it will also decrease your learning curve so you can get up and running faster.

This built-in job library is a group of job type templates that contain all the logic you need to perform major jobs. There are database libraries for DTS/SSIS packages and for Oracle blocks, as well as libraries for FTP, file operations (move, copy, etc.), iteration, and ZIP, just to name a few. These are functions that almost every enterprise-level job contains, and now that ActiveBatch includes them, you can concentrate on the specifics of what you're doing and not on all the hassle of creating them by hand each time. The libraries also greatly reduce the likelihood of errors.

Taking more of an object-oriented approach to jobs, ActiveBatch now has what it calls "reference objects." Reference objects are like classes in .Net: You create the objects once, and you can use them in multiple jobs and plans. It’s like building your own job library. It really doesn't get any better than that for speeding development time and reducing errors.

Job variables are my next favorite feature. They allow you to pass information between different jobs in your plans, so you could get data back from an SSIS (SQL Server Integration Services) package or a script execution and use it in the next step.

Even without the timesaving enhancements mentioned above, this feature alone makes ActiveBatch 6.0 more useful than ever before. You can use these variables to iterate through customers and perform actions on each one, or pass values to error notifications so that you can get customized errors. You can even pass the relevant information to an error handler and attempt to fix the problem programmatically.

Other ActiveBatch enhancements include embedded script, resource/time constraints, constraint variables, triggers, customizable alerts, and new job operations (test job, restart, etc.). All together, they make version 6.0 a job scheduling product worth checking out.

ActiveBatch 6.0
Availabile: Next week
Cost: Cross Platform Enterprise Job Scheduler, five Execution Agents (Windows, Linux, Unix, or OpenVMS), and unlimited access to the Client Interface (Graphical UI): $11,500. Price includes a seat in a training course and version upgrades for one year.
Verdict: ActiveBatch 6.0 is ushering in a new era for enterprise job scheduling. The built-in job libraries get you up and running quickly, and you can re-use your work by saving your jobs as reference objects. You can perform true enterprise-level work by passing variables between jobs. This really will take your ActiveBatch processing to places you never even considered before.

Posted by Sean McCown on May 17, 2007 11:10 AM

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