Informatica Overview

-Ashu
Database Systems
Objectives
Designer interface
• Navigator
– Powercenter designer includes a navigator window on
the left
– You can view folders, repository objects and tasks in it
• Workspace
– It is used to view or edit sources, targets, mapplets,
transformations and mappings.
– You can work with a single tool at a time in workspace
– 2 formats:default and workbook
• Status bar
– Displays the status of the operation you perform
• Output window
– Provides details when you perform certain tasks
such as saving work or validating a mapping

• Designer offers several tools which can be

used to create objects necessary to perform
ETL process.
• Source analyzer is used to create source
definition objects. These can be created
manually or imported from a database or aflat
file definition.
• Target designer is used to create the target
definition objects. These can also be created
manually or imported. Eg-structure of how my
target data will be stored(no. of columns etc.)
• Transformation developer is used to create
reusable transformations
• Mapping designer is used to create mappings.
• Mapplet designer is used to create mapplets.
Mapplets is set of transformations that you
can use in mappings
 Repositories
• PowerCenter metadata repository stores all the
objects created within PowerCenter
• All objects stored within repository are
organized within the navigator window
• Folders provide a way to store and organize the
metadata repository including mappings,
schemas and sessions
• Folders and subfolders help in logically
organizing repository.
Source definitions
Source analyzer
 Target
• Once you have defined the source, you need
to define the target.
• It defines structure of relational database
table or flat file where you will load the data
 Transformation
• A transformation is a repository object that
generates, modifies or passes data
• You can create transformations using
powercenter designer tool
• A transformation toolbar gives a quick access
to create new transformations
PowerCenter transformations
 Transformation types

• Passive transformation
– do not increase or decrease no. of rows it receives as input
• Active transformation
– Which do not output exact no. of rows that are input
 Passive transformation
• If 3 rows are input in a passive transformation, 3 rows
will be generated as output
• For eg, an ETL developer wants to create a simple
mapping for loading customer phone numbers and
providing a sequence to each customer
• For some reason, phone numbers are stored in source
system in character format
• Developer needs to convert 3000 character fields into
numeric, so he uses a sequence generator
transformation to provide a sequence to 3000 customer
data rows
• He then uses an expression transformation
• Expression transformation applies the
calculation on 3000 rows and outputs all of
them in a numeric format
• The transformed data is then loaded in a
target tables
• In this, sequence generator and expression
transformation are passive transformations
 Active transformation
• Transformation that discard rows with bad data are
example of active transformation
• Eg, In a mapping developer has configured a source
qualifier transformation to read data from 2 relational
tables belonging to same schema using homogeneous
join
• He then uses a filter transformation to filter null fields
and send only data fields for further processing
• In this case source qualifier and filter transformations
are examples.
 Source qualifier
• Source qualifier helps you read data from
source
• Server generates a query for each source
qualifier
• The default query used is select statement for
each source column used in mapping
 Data types
• Powercenter generates a select statement for
different platforms
• The data type of each source and target is known to
powercenter when it is imported to the
powercenter repository
• These are called native data types
• The source qualifier transformation of the mapping
will convert the source native data types to a
database neutral(common language) used
internally by powercenter
 Workflows
• A workflow is a set of instructions that tells
the integration service how to run a task such
as sessions, email notifications and shell
commands
• After creating task in task developer, in
workflow designer you connect the tasks with
links to create a workflow
• You can also create tasks from within the
workflow designer
 Workflow object

Start task Session task

• A session tasks executes a mapping.

• It can execute only one mapping at a time.
Workflow manager
• In workflow manger, you define a set of
instructions called a workflow to execute
mappings you build in the designer
• Generally a workflows contain a session and
any other task you want to perform to run a
session task
• Tasks may include a session, email notification
or scheduling information
• You connect each task with links in a window
 Workflow manager tools
• Task developer-helps in creating tasks you
want to run in the workflow
• Worklet designer-helps in creating a worklet
– A worklet is an object representing a set of tasks
created to be reused in a set of workflow logic in
multiple workflows
• Workflow designer-to create a workflow by
connecting tasks with links
Powercenter tasks
• Session
– run logic of a mapping
– One session task can run only one mapping
• Command
– Run external commands
– You can use it to specify unix commands, to remove rejected
files, creating files etc.
• Email
– Send an email to defined recipient’
– You can use it to send an email to developer if a particular
session fails.
• Decision
– Choose between paths in a wokflow
– You can use decision task instead of multiple link
conditions in a workflow
• Assignment
– Assignment task is used to assign a value to a user
defined workflow variable
• Timer
– Allows you to specify period of time to wait before
powercenter runs the next task in the workflow
• Control
– Used to control execution of workflow
– You can stop, abort or fail parent workflow or top level
workflow by defining the appropriate condition in the
control task
• Event wait
– Wait for an event to occur before executing next
session in workflow
• Event raise
– Represents a user defined event.