What Is AB-Initio ?

Ab Initio means “ Starts From the Beginning”. Ab-Initio software works with the client-server model.

The client is called “Graphical Development Environment” (you can call it GDE).It resides on user desktop.The server or back-end is called Co-Operating System”. The Co-Operating System can reside in a mainframe or unix remote machine.

The Ab-Initio code is called graph ,which has got .mp extension. The graph from GDE is required to be deployed in corresponding .ksh version. In Co-Operating system the
corresponding .ksh in run to do the required job.

How Ab-Initio Job Is Run What happens when you push the “Run” button?

•Your graph is translated into a script that can be executed in the Shell Development
•This script and any metadata files stored on the GDE client machine are shipped (via
FTP) to the server.
•The script is invoked (via REXEC or TELNET) on the server.
•The script creates and runs a job that may run across many hosts.
•Monitoring information is sent back to the GDE client.

Ab-Intio Environment The advantage of Ab-Initio code is that it can run in both the serial and multi-file system environment. Serial Environment: The normal UNIX file system. Muti-File System: Multi-File System (mfs) is meant for parallelism. In an mfs a particular file physically stored across different partition of the machine or even different machine but pointed by a logical file, which is stored in the co-operating system.

The logical file is the control file which holds the pointer to the physical locations.About Ab-Initio Graphs: An Ab-Initio graph comprises number of components to serve different purpose. Data is read or write by a component according to the dml ( do not confuse with the database “data manipulating language” The most commonly used components are described in the following sections.