Informatica Tutorial

What is Informatica?

Informatica has played a cardinal role in data integration over the years. Informatica is an American software development company that provides products for data integration. Informatica’s Informatica PowerCenter is most commonly used for performing ETL operations, such as data quality, data masking, data replication, data virtualization, and master data management services. Informatica works on a service-oriented architecture and promotes services and resources on various computers. It provides transformations that may be connected or unconnected to the data flow, or transformations classified on the basis of the number of rows (Active transformation and Passive transformation)

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Why should you learn informatica?

Informatica is commonly utilized worldwide in organizations that want to remain on top of their results. With more than 30% of the world's information already stored in existing systems like Mainframe, there is a tremendous opportunity for a useful tool like Informatica when it comes to data integration. Along with that, Informatica is your key to the world of big data. There are therefore organizations that give top-notch wages to professionals who are well-versed in this top ETL tool.

Prerequisites of learning Informatica

To learn Informatica, it is necessary to have good knowledge of PL/ SQL (Structured Query Language) to access and edit databases.

Features supported by Informatica

• CI/CD & REST initiatives: Uses REST APIs to deploy, update, and query objects and to compare mappings that are developed in a CI/CD (Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment) pipeline. 
• CLAIRE® recommendations and insights: CLAIRE Artificial Intelligence provides best practice recommendations for mappings when designing. It also displays insights about similarities between mappings.
• Debugging enhancements: Collects aggregated cluster logs for mapping in the Monitoring tool or by using an infacmd ms command. 
• Blockchain support: Connect to a blockchain to use blockchain sources and targets in mappings that run on the Spark engine, communicating with the REST web services that expose the blockchain to trigger the transactions according to the set business rules.
• Data Processor on Spark: Processes unstructured and semi-structured file formats using the Data Processor transformation on the Spark engine. 
• Profiling on Spark: Run profiles and choose sampling options on the Spark engine. You can perform data domain discovery and run scorecards on the Spark engine. 
• Hierarchical Data Processing enhancements: Processes complex data types such as array, struct, and map, in mappings, run on the Spark engine.
• Midstream hierarchical data parsing: Complex functions to parse up to 5MB of data midstream in a mapping on the Spark engine. Parse hierarchical JSON and XML data in a midstream string port using intelligent structure models and complex functions.
• Data preview: Preview data for relational sources, and data provisioning after you complete data discovery.
• Intelligent Structure Discovery improvements: Processes additional input types such as ORC, Avro, and Parquet, creates an intelligent structure model from a sample file at design time and arranges unidentified input data in the sample file as a structured JSON format in the output model.

Why is informatics so widely accepted by organizations?

Informatica is well known as the ETL tool and is opted by many organizations around the world in performing certain operations on the data systems in the backend. These operations include cleaning, modifying, the data based on some rules and regulations. And most notably it is known as the data integration tool.

Informatica is widely accepted due to the following reasons:

• Informatica allows you to work collaboratively smoothly with information business and technology. 
• It is remarkably simple to use and there are a lot of automated processes available. 
• You can implement Informatica for the supervision of operations and governance 
• Your data analysis and software can be fed with data in real-time 
• Advanced data transformations can be done while moving from source to destination 
• It also provides master data management to connect important data to a common destination.

Why is data integration technology used?

Nowadays every company processes a huge data set. They come from a variety of sources and need to be processed in order to provide insightful information on how to make business decisions. However, quite often, such data have the following challenges:

• For the large organizations there will be bulk amounts of data. Here the data can be any format, thereby making available in different databases and in unstructured formats.
• This unstructured data in multiple databases needed to be combined, collated, and news to work seamlessly.
• Between the database, organizations implement the unique interfaces for the databases, any change in the particular database, then the interfaces needs to be updated.

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Here the data integration technology came into existence to solve all those complicated challenges that arise in the organizations. With the help of this technology, data from different databases can be communicated very smoothly and reliably. However, data integration technology comes with differentarhcitecyure to perform the operations on the data. Informatica uses ETL architecture to perform data integration.

So we need to now learn what ETL is and how Informatica performs ETL to solve the business problems.

What is ETL?

ETL is a type of data integration that incorporates an architecture that extracts, transforms, and then loads data into a target database or file. It's the cornerstone of a data warehouse.

The ETL system helps in performing the following actions. They are:

• Retrieve data from different sources 
• Transforms and cleans the data 
• Indexes of data 
• Summary of data 
• Loads data to the warehouse 
• Tracks changes to the source data required for the warehouse 
• Keys to Restructure 
• Keeps the metadata in place 
• Refresh the warehouse with updated data

You have learned what ETL is and what the ETL mechanism is, we are now in a better position to understand why Informatica is the best approach in such situations. We can also explain what the usual real-life situation is where Informatica will come in handy.

What is the use of Informatica ETL tools?

Informatica PowerCenter is a premium data integration solution currently available. The explanation it offers the best option for large companies is that it is: 

• Database neutral and can therefore interact with any database 
• The most effective data transformation tool. Converts data from one program to another format

Now we will learn about how informatica performs ETL.

Top 60 frequently asked Informatica interview questions & answers for freshers & experienced professionals

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How Does Informatica Performs ETL?

ETL: Extract

• PowerCenter can read data, row by row, from a table (or a group of similar tables) in a database, or from a file 
• This database or file shall be referred to as the source 
• The source structure is found in the source description entity.

ETL: Transform

• Informatica PowerCenter converts rows to the format that the second (target) method would be able to use. 
• The logic of this conversion is described in transformation objects.

ETL: Load

• Informatica PowerCenter writes data, row by row, to a table (or group of associated tables) in a database, or to a file 
• This database or file shall be referred to as the goal 
• The configuration of the target is included in the target description object.

Now we will learn about the real-time applications of the information.

Applications of informatica:

The real-time applications of Informatica are:

• Changing from a legacy system like a mainframe to a modern database system requires data to be transferred from the old system to the new system. 
• If a company wishes to set up its own data warehouse, an ETL tool will be required to transfer the data from output to the new data warehouse. 
• Informatica can also be used as a data cleaning tool. 
• Informatica also provides incorporation of online resources, business data, etc.

Now you have gained the basic concepts of Informatica and ETL.

We will now be going to learn about the Informatica architecture in depth. 

Let's dig deeply now and grasp Informatica's Informatica Tutorial blog, its design and use case.

Informatica PowerCenter is the flagship product of Informatica and is often used interchangeably. Just to summarise, Informatica Powercenter is a single centralised enterprise data integration platform that enables businesses and government agencies of all sizes to access, discover and integrate data from virtually any business system, in any format, and distribute data across the enterprise at any speed. It is an ETL (Extract, Transform and Load) method with its key benefit over other ETLs.

• It is stable and can be used in Windows and UNIX-based systems. 
• It is high-performance and very easy to build, maintain and manage.

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Informatica PowerCenter Architecture:

Informatica’s PowerCenter uses a Service-Oriented-Architecture (SOA) consisting of the following components:

• Repository Service – it is a separate process performing functions like retrieval, insertion, and updating of the metadata in the repository databases.
• Integration Service – the integration service is responsible for the movement of transformed data from sources into the mapping targets.
• Reporting Service – enables the generation of reports.
• Nodes – A service role node runs applications and a compute role node performs computations.
• Informatica Designer – an interface used to build and manage PowerCenter mapping objects like source, target, and mapplets. 
• Workflow Manager – executes tasks like emails, sessions, and shell commands. It contains a task developer, worklet designer, and workflow designer to manage and develop workflows.
• Workflow Monitor – the Workflow Monitor displays workflows that have run at least once. Workflows can be run, stopped, resumed, and aborted from the workflow monitor. It comprises the Navigator window, Output window, Time window, Gantt Chart view, and Task view.
• Repository Manager – allows navigation through multiple folders and repositories to manage user permissions, perform folder functions and view metadata.

 For more information on the Informatica architecture, click on the Informatica Certification Training below.

[ Related Article: informatica powercenter architecture ]

Informatica Architecture and its components:

In order to understand Informatica in real time, we should have an in-depth understanding of Informatica Architecture and other Informatica components. So you'll be able to understand the following at the end of this Informatica Tutorial blog:

• What is informatica architecture?
• Flow of data in informatica
• Informatica domains and nodes
• Informatica services and service manager

Client Components of Informatica PowerCenter:

The client components of informatica powercenter are:

• Powercenter repository manager
• Informatica Powercenter Designer
• Informatica Powercenter Workflow manager
• Informatica workflow designer:
• Informatica Powercenter Workflow Monitor:
• Informatica Administration Console

Server Components of Informatica PowerCenter:

The components of the PowerCenter server provide the following services: Informatica Architecture Tutorial

• Repository service: The repository service operates the repository. Retrieves, inserts, and updates metadata in repository database tables. 
• Integration service: integration systems run sessions and workflows. 
• SAP BW service: The SAP BW service scans for RFC requests from SAP BW and initiates workflows to retrieve or load data from SAP BW.
• Web services hub: The web services hub accepts requests from web service clients and shows PowerCenter workflows as services.

For more information on the Informatica architecture, client and server components, please click on the Informatica Architecture Tutorial here.

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Conclusion:

In this tutorial i had clearly explained the concepts in depth of how Informatica helps in data integration, client and server side components,etc Moreover, informatica is a data integration platform based on the architecture of the ETL. It offers data integration tools and services for various companies, industries and government agencies, including telecommunications, health care, financial, and insurance services. 

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