INFORMATICA POWER CENTER - A SHORT TUTORIAL

Lets learn at Informatica Power Center in less than 30mins.

We will first discuss the basic overall architecture of the product, and then will have some hands on to break through.

Informatica is a tool for the ETL process and integration, which has a service-oriented architecture. SOA provides the ability to scale services and share resources across multiple machines.

Informatica has the ability to communicate with all major data sources and database vendors. It can move data to/from these data sources.

Power Center Domain is the fundamental and an important administrative unit. It is a collection of nodes and services. A node is the logical representation of a machine in a domain. Services are the processes that help in the whole ETL process, e.g. authentication, authorization, repository management, integration services etc.

Services for the domain include:

• Service Manager: It manages all domain operations. It runs the application services and performs domain functions (e.g. authentication, authorization, and logging) on each node in the domain. The Service Manager uses TCP/IP to communicate with the application services.

· Application services

· Repository Service: It manages the repository. Repository is the data about all the data and and the ETL involved on the data. It retrieves, inserts, and updates metadata in the repository database tables.

· Integration Service: The Integration Service runs sessions and workflows.

A session is a set of instructions that tells the Integration Service how to move data from sources to targets

A workflow is a set of instructions that tells the Integration Service how to execute tasks, such as sessions, email notifications, and shell commands.

The Integration Service reads workflow information from the repository. The Integration Service connects to the repository through the Repository Service to fetch metadata from the repository.

· SAP BW Service: listens for RFC requests from SAP BW and processes it.

· Web Services Hub: Runs within Service Manager and receives requests from web service clients and processes.

There are 2 types of nodes:

1. Gateway Nodes: A gateway node can run application services, and it can serve as a master gateway node. The master gateway node is the entry point to the domain.
2. Worker Nodes: A worker node is any node not configured to serve as a gateway. The Service Manager performs limited domain operations on a worker node.

Some other terms:

Mapping: is to depict the flow of data between sources and targets.

Transformations: We add transformations to a mapping that depict how the Integration Service extracts and transforms data before it loads a target.

A transformation is a part of a mapping that generates or modifies data. Every mapping includes a Source Qualifier transformation, representing all data read from a source and temporarily stored by the Integration Service. In addition, you can add transformations that calculate a sum, look up a value, or generate a unique ID before the source data reaches the target

Source Qualifier: The source qualifier represents the rows that the Integration Service reads from the source when it runs a session.

Session: A session is a set of instructions that tells the Integration Service how to move data from sources to targets. You create a session for each mapping that you want the Integration Service to run

Workflow: A workflow is a set of instructions that tells the Integration Service how to execute tasks, such as sessions, email notifications, and shell commands.

Above is some insight into the working of the Informatica. For more in depth architecture of the Informatica, you can visit:

http://informatica.techtiks.com/informatica_architecture.html

Informatica tool has 3 main components:

1. Client tools: These tools are used for the development process. It has the following supporting tools:

· Designer: To define mapping and transformation.

· Workflow Manager: To define the session and the workflow.

· Workflow Monitor: To monitor execution of sessions.

· Repository Manager: To manage repository.

2. Server tools: Can be considered as the staging area, where data from sources are fetched, transformed and then loaded into the target.

3. Repository: Repository is a kind of data inventory where all the data related to mappings, sources, targets etc is kept.

Now once we are familiar with the overall description of the product, we are now ready to have some practical hands-on. Follow the following steps to perform your ETL. This is a highly generic steps, and depending on your requirements u need to perform your transformations.

1. Create a folder to organize your work.

2. Logon to the Repository in the Designer Window.

3. Create the Source Repository in the Repository Database.

4. Create the Target Repository in the Repository Database. If Target does not exist, then create and execute the Target creation commands.

5. Now perform the source to target mapping, with appropriate transformations.

6. Now create a session for the mapping and thereafter a workflow for its execution. This will be done in the Workflow Manager.

7. Now run the workflow and watch in Workflow Monitor. It will flash ‘Success’ once the operation completed successfully.

The time is running out. So, will post the pictorial form of the steps in next issue.
Thanks, and comments are solicited.