What is Informatica?

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What is Informatica?

Informatica - a data integration/ETL tool gathers data from distinct sources and loads into various targets. It is the leader ETL tools with over 5800 enterprises depending on it. It moves data between places without storing anything. It utilizes a service-oriented architecture, which carries promoting the ability to services and resources over distinct machines.

Informatica Corporation is the leading Enterprise Data Integration Software service provider in the world. Enterprises rely on Informatica to acquire potential information and manage top business imperatives.

Business analysis and onsite technical coordinates gather the business requirement and technical requirements.

Some of the critical characteristics of Informatica stand out:

  • ETL process components and the user interface
  • Metadata
  • Wider data handling
  • ETL process components and the user interface
  • Data Migration
  • Data Synchronization
  • Data Warehousing
  • Master Data Management
  • Data Marts, Data Hubs
  • Business Activity Monitoring
  • Business Intelligence Reporting
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What is Informatica ETL Tool?

Informatica ETL tool stands for extracting, transforming and loading data between targets. It is different from other devices and languages with inbuilt features to figure user interface where the end user can get the data that is being transformed. It is also capable of managing, integrating and transferring organization data.

Why is Informatica used?

Informatica’s competent features made it go private in a $5.3 billion buyout owned by equity firms Permira Funds and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.

Informatica technology and its tools provide monitoring features and a UI for building logic and out of the box connectivity to multiple sources and targets. Another advantage is when you make complex aggregations or joins, you can use the power of the ETL server to buffer the data rather than the burdening your database that can be utilized for reporting/Analytics.

Why is the Informatica ETL Tool very popular for data integration?

Informatica is the leading tool in data integration as it is capable of lean manufacturing and integration. The influential factors that made this popular are as follows:

  • High Success Rate in Data Integration
  • Easy to Learn
  • Easily Available
  • Competitive Price
  • Comes with its internal scheduler
  • Follows mainstream marketing strategy

What is PowerExchange Informatica?

Informatica PowerExchange is a family of products that enables organizations used to retrieve all enterprise data sources without developing custom data-access programs. It delivers codeless data access with high security to:

  • Major enterprise applications whether on-premise, outsourced, or SaaS
  • Midrange systems
  • Mainframe systems
  • Message-oriented middleware
  • Hadoop
  • All major enterprise database systems and data warehousing environments
  • Industry-wide technology standards including email, LDAP, and Web services
  • Social media networks

Informatica Architecture

  • Informatica ETL tool consists of the following services & components
  • Repository Service -Maintains Informatica metadata and provide access to other services.
  • Integration Service-To move data from sources to targets
  • Reporting Service to enable and generation of reports
  • Nodes – Computing platform where the above services are executed
  • Informatica Designer - Used for the creation of mappings between source and target
  • Workflow Manager – Used to create workflows and other task & their execution
  • Workflow Monitor – Used to monitor the implementation of workflows
  • Repository Manager – Used to manage objects in the repository
  • The typical ETL Project Architecture in Informatica is building with organizational requires data sources, data extraction approaches, machinery cleansing, and ETL management processes.

Applications of Informatica

Typical use cases for Informatica can be

  • An organization migrating from an existing gift system like mainframe to a brand new info system. Therefore the migration of its existing information into a system is often performed.
  • Enterprises setting in place their information Warehouse would need an ETL tool to maneuver information from the assembly system to Warehouse.
  • Informatica is often used as a knowledge cleansing tool.
  • Informatica is better than its competitors because it offers a large variety of product editions.
  • Informatica in Data Warehouse enables organizations to add data in high volumes and distinct types in a cost-effective manner with distinct capabilities.
  • Companies can gain value from distinct new/desperate data formats available on machine data, the cloud/Mobile app, social media and many more.

Therefore the user will decide on a particular version primarily based upon the need. Informatica is consistently featured as information Integration product leader within the Gartner Magic Quadrant listing.

Informatica Concepts

In order to learn Informatica, you need to understand Informatica Concepts such as OLAP, Data Extraction, Data Cleansing and many more. You can understand these topics and many more here.

  • Data Warehousing: Deals with data warehouse construction methodologies such as business requirement analysis, ETL development and testing, Report development and testing, and database design.
  • Data Acquisition: Extracts business information, transforms data into the business process and loads into the target system.
  • Data Extraction: Reads data from distinct sources and thereby defines extraction. It includes ERP, File, Legacy and Relational Sources.
  • Data Transformation: Transforms and cleanses data to distinct business formats. Some among those include Data Merging,  Data Cleansing, Data Scrubbing, and Data Aggregation.
  • OLAP: The technology to recover data from data warehouse and its interface and to create a way between the user and the database.

DOLAP (Desktop OLAP)- To query data from desktop databases.

HOLAP (Hybrid OLAP) – It is the integration of ROLAP and MOLAP.

ROLAP (Relation OLAP) – To query data from relational sources.

MOLAP (Multi OLAP) – To query data from multi-dimensional sources.

Informatica Components

The following are the distinct Informatica business components which are placing a key role in developing data warehouse.

  • Informatica power center
  • Informatica power connect
  • Informatica power mart
  • Informatica power exchange
  • Informatica power analyses
  • Informatica power quality

Transformations in Informatica

Informatica transformations help in transforming the data between source and targets ensuring the quality standards and other requirements.

Informatica Transformations can be two types: Active and Passive

Active Transformation: It changes the number of rows passing from the source to the target i.e., eliminating them from meeting the transformation condition. Passive Transformation: Unlike active transformation, it allows all the rows to pass through the transformation.

Transformations can be Connected or Unconnected Connected Transformation: A connected transformation is only connected directly to the target table in the mapping Unconnected Transformation: A transformation is said to be unconnected if it not connected to other transformations in the mapping. It is called within another transformation and returns a value to the same.

The rank transformation in Informatica is an active, connected one that is used to select a top or bottom data range. It is mostly used to rank numeric port values. However, it allows groups of records instead of a single one.

  • The router transformation in Informatica is an active and connected one, which is similar to the filter transformation. Router transformation is used in condition testing and data filtering.
  • Sorter transformation is an active transformation used to sort data in either ascending/descending order according to single or multiple keys. Sorter transformation is useful to eliminate duplicates in transformation.
  • Source Qualifier is an active transformation that is connected to represent the rows that the integrations service read. Source Qualifier Transformation in Informatica is used to add a relational source to mapping.
  • Normalizer transformation is an active transformation to represent data in a more organized manner. It converts a single row into multiple rows and vice versa and repeats a class score column in four columns.
  • The functioning of a lookup transformation in Informatica is to look up a source, source qualifier, or a target to acquire the data. It works on similar lines as the joiner with few differences.
  • The expression transformation in Informatica is used in row-wise manipulation. Any manipulation that is being performed on an individual record can use an expression transformation. It accepts row-wise data, manipulates it, and then passes it to the target and transfers data between input and output ports.
  • An XML source qualifier transformation in Informatica is a connected transformation as well as an active transformation. It is used in the XML source definition to represent the data elements that the server reads at the time execution. XML Source Qualifier has input and output ports for every column in the source.

Naming Standards in Informatica

The mapping naming standards in Informatica is used to group associated mappings together for ease of recognition and maintenance. It helps to provide a name allowing the ready to recognize the purpose of the mapping anytime.

Debugging in Informatica

Informatica’s debugger is used to troubleshoot mapping errors found before running a session or at the time of running. Informatica Debugger makes use of the existing session to debug a session of its own to debug the mapping.

Importing and Exporting Objects in Informatica

Importing and Exporting objects in Informatica requires respiratory such as session, mapping, workflows, etc that can be taken back up into a .xml format.

Tasks in Informatica

The distinct types of tasks in Informatica are listed here. These are used to manage workflow while running.

  • Assignment- Used to assign a value to a workflow variable
  • Command-Used to run a shell command during the workflow
  • Control-Used to stop or abort the workflow
  • Decision-Tells a condition to evaluate
  • Email-Used to send an email during the workflow
  • Event-Raise-Notifies the Event-Wait task that an event has occurred
  • Event-Wait-It waits for the event to complete in order to start the next task
  • Session-Used to run the mapping created in Designer buy linking to session
  • Timer-It waits for an already timed event to start

Informatica Interview Questions

The data warehousing today is one among the critical components of any enterprise that led to tremendous growth in job roles and opportunities. If you’re exploring job opportunities around Informatica, we are providing the list of Informatica Interview Questions with answers to help you crack your interview.

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