Overview

Interested in becoming more familiar with Stonebranch? Here are some sample exercises you can try, in order of increasing complexity.

To suggest more exercise ideas, email us at: workloadautomation-stewards@utlists.utexas.edu

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Exercise 1: Alert When a File Arrives

Goal: Send yourself an email when a file arrives on a file server.

Requirements:

• An agent
• A file transfer server (transfer.its.utexas.edu, or JScape) and credentials for that file server
• An email account

Types of Stonebranch objects involved:

• FTP File Monitor
• Email Task
• Email Connection
• Credential

Guide:

1. Outside of Stonebranch, confirm that you can reach your file transfer server (transfer.its or JScape) via SFTP. The SFTP bash utility is a good way to do this.
2. Create an email task and fill in the required fields. This will be your email alert. Use the SHARED_EMC_default email connection for outgoing mail.
3. Test the email task and make sure that you can receive the email alert.
4. Using your SFTP credentials, create a credential object in Stonebranch (remember that Stonebranch objects start with your six-character business area code followed by an underscore and CRD, like so: "EIS103_CRD_<nameofcredential>").
5. We'll check for this file on the transfer server from a different location via the SFTP protocol. Create an FTP file monitor and fill out the required fields.
6. Run this object on any agent that you have access to.
7. With the file monitor running, upload a test file to the transfer server. You should receive an email.

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Exercise 2: Bundle a Set Of Variables and Promote Them to Qual/Prod 

Goal: Create a set of variables in Dev, bundle them, and send them to Qual and Prod.

Requirements:

• An agent, and credentials for that agent

Types of Stonebranch objects involved:

• Variable
• Bundle

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Exercise 3: Process a File with Multiple Steps

Goal: Process a file with multiple steps at regular intervals, and send yourself the output. Use a Workflow.

Requirements:

• An agent, and credentials for that agent
• A test file with some data to be modified
• At least two scripts that modify data in your test file

Types of Stonebranch objects involved:

• Linux/Unix Task
• Workflow Task 
• Email Task

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Exercise 4: Run a Task via the Web API

Goal: Instead of starting a task from the controller interface or time/cron trigger, start a task using the web API.

Note: ITS supports a Python library for interacting with the Stonebranch Web API: https://github.austin.utexas.edu/itsy-as/ut-stonebranch-rest. You can install it by adding "ut-stonebranch-rest" to your pip requirements file.

Requirements:

• An agent, and credentials for that agent
• A task
• Task

Types of Stonebranch objects involved:

• Task

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Exercise 5: Query an SQL Database

Goal: Execute a query against an SQL database.

Requirements:

• An agent, and credentials for that agent
• A SQL Database

Types of Stonebranch objects involved:

• SQL Task
• Database Connection

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Exercise 6: Run a Mainframe Job and Send the Output Elsewhere

Goal: Execute a natural job on the mainframe and receive output.

Note: There are two different ways to do this, each with pros and cons.

Requirements:

• An agent, and credentials for that agent
• A mainframe job
• A file transfer server (transfer.its.utexas.edu, or JScape) and credentials for that file server

Types of Stonebranch objects involved:

• z/OS Task
• FTP File Monitor

Recommended reading:

• (Stonebranch) How to Submit Task Manager Jobgroups from Stonebranch 
• (Stonebranch) How to schedule mainframe batch with Stonebranch

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