Informatica Experienced Interview Questions – part 1

1. Difference between connected and unconnected lookup transformation in Informatica?

Differences between Connected and Unconnected Lookup Transformation: Connected lookup

receives input values directly from mapping pipeline, whereas Unconnected lookup receives
values from the lookup expression from another transformation.

2. Difference between stop and abort in Informatica?

When you say “Stop” – Informatica Server waits for completing the Server Processes that are
going to finish before going to stop the workflow. When you say “Abort” – Informatica Server
going to stop the workflow immediately irrespective of the Server Processes are going to finish or
not.

3. Difference between Static and Dynamic caches?

If you cache the lookup table, you can choose to use a dynamic or static cache. By default,
the lookup cache remains static and does not change during the session. With a dynamic
cache, the Informatica Server inserts or updates rows in the cache during the session

4. What is Persistent Lookup cache? What is its significance?

A persistent cache can improve mapping performance because it eliminates the time required
to read the lookup table. The first time that. Data Integration. runs a mapping using a
persistent lookup cache, it saves the cache files to disk.

5. Difference between and reusable transformation and mapplet?.

Mapplet consists of set of transformations which will contain a reusable business logic which
can be reused across various mappings. A reusable transformation is a single transformation
that can be reusable.

6. How the Informatica server sorts the string values in Rank transformation?

When the informatica server runs in the ASCII data movement mode it sorts session
data using Binary sort order

7. Is sorter an active or passive transformation? When do we consider it to be active and

passive?

Its called active transformation because when we want the distinct rows to be sorted and
once the sort happens we have rows with the duplicate data eliminated. This happens by
setting the distinct output rows property to true. Hence Sort Transformation is called active
Transformation.

8. Explain about Informatica server Architecture?

Informatica architecture is service-oriented architecture (SOA). A service-oriented architecture

is defined as a group of services that communicate with each other. It means a simple data
transfer during this communication, or it can be two or more services that coordinate the
same activity.

9. In update strategy Relational table or flat file which gives us more performance? Why?

Update strategy can be performed on Relational tables only. Not possible to update the Flat
files.
Informatica Experienced Interview Questions – part 1
Note: Flat file is better only for Insert, but if you are using Update strategy for updating a table
then table gives better performance and Flat file cannot be updated.

10. What are the out put files that the Informatica server creates during running a session?

Mentioned below are the few output files:

Cache files: These files are created at the time of memory cache creation. For circumstances
like Lookup transformation, Aggregator transformation, etc index and data cache files are
created by the INFORMATICA server.

Session detail file: As the name defines, this file contains load statistics like table name, rows
rejected or written for each target in mapping and can be viewed in the monitor window.

Performance detail file: This file is a part of session property sheet and contains session
performance information in order to determine improvement areas.

INFORMATICA server log: Server creates a log for all status and error messages and can be
seen in INFORMATICA home directory.

Session log file: For each session, the server creates a session log file depending on the set
tracing level. The information that can be seen in log files about sessions can be:

Session initialization process,

SQL commands creation for reader and writer threads,

List of errors encountered and

Load summary

Post session email: This helps in communicating the information about the session (session
completed/session failed) to the desired recipients automatically.

Reject file: This file contains information about the data that has not been used/written to
targets.

Control file: In case, when the session uses the external loader, control file consists of loading
instructions and data format about the target file.

Indicator file: This file basically contains a number which highlights the rows marked for
INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE or REJECT.

Output file: Output file is created based on the file properties.

11. Can you explain what are error tables in Informatica are and how we do error handling in
Informatica?

You specify the database connection to the database where the Integration Service creates
these tables. If the error tables exist for a session, the Integration Service appends row errors
to these tables. Relational database error logging lets you collect row errors from multiple
sessions in one set of error tables
Informatica Experienced Interview Questions – part 1
To do this, you specify the same error log table name prefix for all sessions. You can issue
select statements on the generated error tables to retrieve error data for a particular session.

12. Difference between constraint base loading and target load plan?

Constrained based load order is used to ensure loading parent table before child is

loaded to manage FK constraint in the target database. This is within single pipeline

or data stream in a mapping.

Target load order is used to manage load sequence across pipelines / data streams in

a mapping.

13. Difference between IIF and DECODE function?

DECODE is more efficient than using the IIF function in PowerCenter. IIF will evaluate all
parts of the statement, even if a previous condition is true. The DECODE will stop evaluating
as soon as a condition is true.

14. How to import oracle sequence into Informatica?

Using Stored Procedure hits your performance very badly, I never suggest that
approach. Here are different options.

1) If you have only inserted better use sequence name. nextval in Source qualifier itself.

2) You can raise it using Oracle Trigger, it gives more performance than stored proc but bit
overhead on Database.

3) Function is better than Procedure, in performance point of view.

15. What is parameter file?

A parameter file is a file that contains a list of initialization parameters and a value for each
parameter. You specify initialization parameters in a parameter file that reflect your particular
installation. Oracle supports the following two types of parameter files: Server Parameter
Files.

16. Difference between Normal load and Bulk load?

The main difference between normal and bulk load is, in normal load Informatica repository
service create logs and in bulk load log is not being created. That is the reason bulk load
loads the data fast and if anything goes wrong the data can not be recovered.

17. How u will create header and footer in target using Informatica?
Informatica Experienced Interview Questions – part 1
There is so many ways to set header and footer. We discuss one way

Create two dummy file like header and footer and our data mapping in parallel manner also
use sequence generator and pass 1st line from header dummy file and last line pass through
footer dummy and set target load plant like header, data footer as selected order. Set
property in session append if for data and footer. Not necessary for header and run
integration service

18. What are the session parameters?

Session parameters represent values that can change between session runs, such as
database connections or source and target files. Session parameters are either user-defined
or built-in. Use user-defined session parameters in session or workflow properties and define
the values in a parameter file.

19. Where does Informatica store rejected data? How do we view them?

You can find the rejected rows in the session log. Also all rejected records will be available in
the bad file. It is generally a good practice to capture all the known/ possible rejections by
applying rules and writing them onto a file or table

20. What is difference between partitioning of relational target and file targets?

If u partition a session with a relational target informatica server creates multiple connections
to the target database to write target data concurrently u partition a session with a file target
the informatica server creates one target file for each partition can configure session
properties
to merge these target files.

21. What are mapping parameters and variables in which situation we can use them?

In the Designer, use mapping parameters and variables to make mappings more flexible.
Mapping parameters and variables represent values in mappings and mapplets.

If you declare mapping parameters and variables in a mapping, you can reuse a mapping by
altering the parameter or variable values of the mapping in the session. Reuse a mapping to
reduce the overhead of creating multiple mappings when only certain attributes of a mapping
need to be changed.

When you use a mapping parameter or variable in a mapping, you first declare the mapping
parameter or variable for use in each mapplet or mapping. Then, you define a value for the
mapping parameter or variable before you run the session

22. What do you mean by direct loading and Indirect loading in session properties?

Direct Load of Flat File:

When you want to a load a single file into the target, then you can use the direct source
filetype option. You can set the following source file properties in the mapping tab of the
session:
Informatica Experienced Interview Questions – part 1

Source File Directory: Enter the directory name where the source file resides.

Source Filename: Enter the name of the file to be loaded into the target.

Source Filetype: Specify the direct option when you want to load a single file into the target.

Indirect Load of Flat file:

The indirect source file type option is used load the data from multiple source files that have
the same structure and properties. The integration service reads each file sequentially and
then loads the data into the targets

23. How do we implement recovery strategy while running concurrent batches?

If multiple sessions in a concurrent batch fail, you might want to truncate all targets and run
the batch again. However, if a session in a concurrent batch fails and the rest of the sessions
complete successfully, you can recover the session

To recover a session in a concurrent batch:

1. Copy the failed session using Operations-Copy Session.

2. Drag the copied session outside the batch to be a standalone session.
3. Follow the steps to recover a standalone session.
4. Delete the standalone copy.

24. Explain the versioning concept in Informatica?

Well, versioning control in Informatica means, you can control the changes over source code.
It's more like developers can retain the multiple copies of source code and can give them a
label i.e. names which often referred as versions. It controls and tracks the code changes, if I
talk about this in layman language then you can say it gives the power to identify that which
developer has done what.