About Scheduling Metadata

Overview of Scheduling Metadata

The SAS Metadata Server provides central storage and management of metadata about scheduling resources. Before you can use SAS scheduling, metadata must exist for the following resources:

a scheduling server
a batch server
one or more deployment directories (required only for SAS DATA Step batch servers)
one or more jobs that have been deployed for scheduling

Scheduling servers and batch servers have been discussed in previous topics. Metadata definitions for deployment directories, jobs, and flows are described in the following topics.

About Deployment Directory Definitions

A deployment directory is a location on the file system of your SAS application server that contains a batch server. When a SAS Data Integration Studio user deploys a job for scheduling, a DATA step job is generated and placed in this directory. When the job is executed, the job information is read from this directory. The directory is also used when deploying SAS DATA step programs for scheduling from the Schedule Manager.

In order for SAS Data Integration Studio users to deploy jobs, a metadata definition for the deployment directory must exist in the metadata repository. The metadata definition includes the following information:

the name of the SAS Application Server with which the directory is associated
a name for the directory
the path to the directory (either fully qualified or a relative path from the application server)

About Job and Flow Metadata

Job metadata becomes available to the Schedule Manager when you use a SAS application such as SAS Data Integration Studio, SAS Web Report Studio, or the Schedule Manager plug-in in SAS Management Console to schedule a job. The job metadata includes the following information:

the command that is to be used to execute the job
the name of the SAS batch server that is associated with the job
the deployment directory that is associated with the job (required only for SAS DATA Step Batch servers)
the filename of the executable program (required only for SAS DATA Step batch servers)

Flow metadata is created when you use Schedule Manager to create a flow and when you use SAS Web Report Studio to schedule a report. The flow metadata includes the following information:

the name of the scheduling server that is to execute the jobs in the flow
the triggers and dependencies that are associated with the jobs in the flow

Depending on the scheduling server that the user specifies, Schedule Manager converts the flow metadata to the appropriate format and submits it to the scheduling server. Flows that are created by SAS Web Report Studio are automatically directed to the Process Manager Server or the in-process scheduling server.