Informatica PowerCenter 8x Key Concepts – 4

owerCenter Client (contd)

Workflow Manager : In the Workflow Manager, we define a set of instructions called a workflow to execute mappings we build in the Designer. Generally, a workflow contains a session and any other task we may want to perform when we run a session. Tasks can include a session, email notification, or scheduling information.

A set of tasks grouped together becomes worklet. After we create a workflow, we run the workflow in the Workflow Manager and monitor it in the Workflow Monitor. Workflow Manager has following three window panes,Task Developer, Create tasks we want to accomplish in the workflow. Worklet Designer, Create a worklet in the Worklet Designer. A worklet is an object that groups a set of tasks. A worklet is similar to a workflow, but without scheduling information. You can nest worklets inside a workflow. Workflow Designer, Create a workflow by connecting tasks with links in the Workflow Designer. We can also create tasks in the Workflow Designer as you develop the workflow. The ODBC connection details are defined in Workflow Manager “Connections “ Menu .

Workflow Monitor : We can monitor workflows and tasks in the Workflow Monitor. We can view details about a workflow or task in Gantt Chart view or Task view. We can run, stop, abort, and resume workflows from the Workflow Monitor. We can view sessions and workflow log events in the Workflow Monitor Log Viewer.

The Workflow Monitor displays workflows that have run at least once. The Workflow Monitor continuously receives information from the Integration Service and Repository Service. It also fetches information from the repository to display historic information.

The Workflow Monitor consists of the following windows:

Navigator window – Displays monitored repositories, servers, and repositories objects.

Output window – Displays messages from the Integration Service and Repository Service.

Time window – Displays progress of workflow runs.

Gantt chart view – Displays details about workflow runs in chronological format.

Task view – Displays details about workflow runs in a report format.

Repository Manager

We can navigate through multiple folders and repositories and perform basic repository tasks with the Repository Manager. We use the Repository Manager to complete the following tasks:

1. Add domain connection information, we can configure domain connection information.

2. Add and connect to a repository, we can add repositories to the Navigator window and client registry and then connect to the repositories.

3. Work with PowerCenter domain and repository connections, we can edit or remove domain connection information. We can connect to one repository or multiple repositories. We can export repository connection information from the client registry to a file. We can import the file on a different machine and add the repository connection information to the client registry.

4. Change your password. We can change the password for our user account.

5. Search for repository objects or keywords. We can search for repository objects containing specified text. If we add keywords to target definitions, use a keyword to search for a target definition.

6. View objects dependencies. Before we remove or change an object, we can view dependencies to see the impact on other objects.

7. Compare repository objects. In the Repository Manager, wecan compare two repository objects of the same type to identify differences between the objects.

8. Truncate session and workflow log entries. we can truncate the list of session and workflow logs that the Integration Service writes to the repository. we can truncate all logs, or truncate all logs older than a specified date.

Read More about Informatica PowerCenter 8x

Business Intelligence Challenge – Product Upgrades & Migrations, Moving the Code – 4

Last time we discussed about Impact Assessment , the next logical step after this is to perform the actual upgrade or migration of the code.

Moving the Code: Performing Upgrade or Migration of the Objects

When we talk about product upgrades, always the product vendor provides tools by which the objects in the earlier version can be upgraded to the latest version. Yes we would see some objects failing through while using such tools; these are the ones that would need rework after the upgrade process.

When we talk about product migration like moving from Cognos to Business Objects or Business Objects to Cognos, there is good scope for us to look for some ways to automate the code migration. Earlier discussions have been on how to leverage the metadata for understanding the environment, now we are looking at an option on how to manipulate or transform the metadata so that an object in platform ‘A’ becomes compliant to platform ‘B’.

Steps involved in building an automated product migration process

Perform metadata level object mapping between the two platforms, determine the gaps. This would actually be a ‘by product’ of ‘Step 2’ in Impact Assessment

Build individual components that would

• Read the metadata from the source platform and prepare a repository
• Have the knowledge of the match & gap between the platforms, could be reference tables
• Transform the ‘source’ metadata and write out as understood by the ‘target’ platform by using the reference tables

Benefits of Automated Migration

• Helps avoid creation of objects from scratch
• Ensures availability of time for testing (core task) than code development
• Enables team to have a flexible skillset
• A faster way of delivering things when a ‘one to one’ migration from the source platform is seen as a must

Automated Migration Challenges

Transforming the source metadata to the target platform would be a challenge, especially with data manipulation functions. Having a good understanding of the gaps will help; a reference table mapping the functions between the platforms would be useful. In scenarios where a function cannot be converted to the target platform, a comment can be written into a log file enabling quicker attention.

Have seen good success in writing such automated migration components though not 100%. With almost every products providing good SDK kits for reading and as well writing metadata and as well with the support for XML structures, writing such bridges for object migration are getting easier.

Whether the objects in a product are migrated/upgraded in an automated way or not, the following activity of ‘Validation’ plays a key role in ensuring the final quality, next time let us discuss on some of the means for effective validation ….

Read More about Business Intelligence Challenge

Informatica 8.6 Enhancements for Developers – 1

Informatica has released its latest version 8.6 covering all the hot fixes it released for the prior version 8.5 and including few new features. Since version 8, a Unified Admin Console has been designed for managing Integration and Repository services. These were discussed in earlier Blogs.

What does PowerCenter 8.6 bring new for the developers? Let us discuss PowerCenter 8.6 Client enhancements which will be useful to the developers.

1. Creating Targets from Transformations

We can create targets based on transformations in the workspace or navigator.

To create a target,

1. Right-click the transformation in the workspace and select the Create and Add Target option.

2. Alternatively, we can drag and drop the transformation in the Target Designer.

The target that is created has the same port definitions as the transformation from which it was created. We can edit the target definitions later. In addition, the target type is the same as that of the repository used.

2. Invalid/Invalidated renamed

In PowerCenter 7, the two states of objects were known as Invalid and Invalidated.

The exact meaning of these states is as follows:

Invalid – an object will not run,

Invalidated – an object may be invalid or may not run.

The difference between the two terms was not very clear. Therefore, to avoid any confusion, in PowerCenter 8.6, the two states have been renamed as Invalid and Impacted. While the Invalid state still implies that an object will not run, Impacted means that an object is affected by a change, and therefore, may not run.

Apart from the naming convention the icons are also changed in PowerCenter 8.

3. Propagating Port Descriptions

In the Designer, in addition to the other properties of port propagation, we can edit a port description and propagate the description to other transformations in the mapping.

4. Environment SQL Enhancements

In PowerCenter 8, environment SQL can be used to execute an SQL statement at the beginning of each transaction. The Integration Service executes transaction environment SQL at the beginning of each transaction. Environment SQL can still be used to execute an SQL statement at each connection to the database.

Use SQL commands that depend upon a transaction being opened during the entire read or write process. For example, the following SQL command modifies how the session handles characters:

ALTER SESSION SET NLS_LENGTH_SEMANTICS=CHAR

5. Flat File Enhancements

PowerCenter 8 includes enhancements for handling flat files. Some of these improve performance.

Flat files can now use Integer or Double data types.

In addition, target partitions can be merged. The flat file target merge options include:

Read More about Informatica 8.6

Informatica PowerCenter 8x Key Concepts -3

dministration Console

The Administration Console is a web application that we use to administer the PowerCenter domain and PowerCenter security. There are two pages in the console, Domain Page & Security Page.
We can do the following In Domain Page:

o Create & manage application services like Integration Service and Repository Service

o Create and manage nodes, licenses and folders

o Restart and shutdown nodes

o View log events

o Other domain management tasks like applying licenses and managing grids and resources

We can do the following in Security Page:

o Create, edit and delete native users and groups

o Configure a connection to an LDAP directory service. Import users and groups from the LDAP directory service

o Create, edit and delete Roles (Roles are collections of privileges)

o Assign roles and privileges to users and groups

o Create, edit, and delete operating system profiles. An operating system profile is a level of security that the Integration Services uses to run workflows

4. PowerCenter Client

Designer, Workflow Manager, Workflow Monitor, Repository Manager & Data Stencil are five client tools that are used to design mappings, Mapplets, create sessions to load data and manage repository.

Mapping is an ETL code pictorially depicting logical data flow from source to target involving transformations of the data. Designer is the tool to create mappings

Designer has five window panes, Source Analyzer, Warehouse Designer, Transformation Developer, Mapping Designer and Mapplet Designer.

Source Analyzer:

Allows us to import Source table metadata from Relational databases, flat files, XML and COBOL files. We can only import the source definition in the source Analyzer and not the source data itself is to be understood. Source Analyzer also allows us to define our own Source data definition.

Warehouse Designer:

Allows us to import target table definitions which could be Relational databases, flat files, XML and COBOL files. We can also create target definitions manually and can group them into folders. There is an option to create the tables physically in the database that we do not have in source analyzer. Warehouse designer doesn’t allow creating two tables with same name even if the columns names under them vary or they are from different databases/schemas.

Transformation Developer:

Transformations like Filters, Lookups, Expressions etc that have scope to be re-used are developed in this pane. Alternatively Transformations developed in Mapping Designer can also be reused by checking the option‘re-use’ and by that it would be displayed under Transformation Developer folders.

Mapping Designer:

This is the place where we actually depict our ETL process; we bring in source definitions, target definitions, transformations like filter, lookup, aggregate and develop a logical ETL program. In this place it is only a logical program because the actual data load can be done only by creating a session and workflow.

Mapplet Designer:

We create a set of transformations to be used and re-used across mappings.

Read More about Informatica PowerCenter 

Few tips related to Informatica 8.x environment

Let us discuss some special scenarios that we might face in Informatica 8.x environments.

A. In Informatica 8.x, multiple integration services can be enabled under one node. In case if there is a need to determine the process associated with an Integration service or Repository service, then it can be done as follows.

If there are multiple Integration Services enabled in a node, there are multiple pmserver processes running on the same machine. In PowerCenter 8.x, it is not possible to differentiate between the processes and correlate it to a particular Integration Service, unlike in 7.x where every pmserver process is associated with a specific pmserver.cfg file. Likewise, if there are multiple Repository Services enabled in a node, there are multiple pmrepagent processes running on the same machine. In PowerCenter 8.x, it is not possible to differentiate between the processes and correlate it to a particular Integration Service.

To do these in 8.x do the following:

1.      Log on to the Administration Console

2.      Click on Logs > Display Settings.

3.      Add Process to the list of columns to be displayed in the Log Viewer.

4.      Refresh the log display.

5.      Use the PID from this column to identify the process as follows:

UNIX:

Run the following command:

ps –ef grep pid

Where pid is the process ID of the service process.

Windows:

1. 1. Run task manager.
   2. Select the Processes tab.

Scroll to the value in the PID column that is displayed in the PowerCenter Administration Console.

B. Sometimes, the PowerCenter Administration Console URL is inaccessible from some machines even when the Informatica services are running. The following error is displayed on the browser:

“The page cannot be displayed”

The reason for this is due to an invalid or missing configuration in the hosts file on the client machine.

To resolve this error, do the following:

1. Edit the hosts file located in the windows/system32/drivers/etc folder on the server from where the Administration Console is being accessed.
2. Add the host IP address and the host name (for the host where the PowerCenter services are installed).

Example

10.1.2.10 ha420f3

1. Launch the Administration Console and access the login page by typing the URL: http://<host>:<port>/adminconsole in the browser address bar.

It should be noted that the host name in the URL matches the host entry in the hosts file.

Read More about Informatica 8.x

Informatica and Stored Procedures

A. Described below is a scenario where the requirement is to have a stored procedure that returns a cursor as a source.By and large PowerCenter does not support a stored procedure that returns a cursor as a source. The workaround for this is1. The procedure that will load the data to a new table:

CREATE OR REPLACE procedure load (p_initial_date in date, p_final_Date in date) as

str_load varchar2 (500);
str_clean varchar2 (500);
begin
str_clean:= ‘DELETE FROM EMP’;
str_load:= ‘INSERT INTO EMP select * from EMPLOYEE where DOJ between trunc

(p_initial_date) and trunc (p_final_Date) ‘;
execute immediate str_clean;
execute immediate str_load;
EXCEPTION
WHEN OTHERS
THEN
ROLLBACK;
end load;

2. Create the table that will receive the data from the procedure:

SQL> create table EMP as SELECT * from EMPLOYEE where 1 > 2;

3. Add a Store Procedure transformation to the PowerCenter mapping. This transformation will execute this new procedure called as LOAD on this example.

4. Set the run method to be Source Pre Load, to be executed before read the source table.

5. Import the EMP table as a Source Definition. This table will be populated by the new Store Procedure.

If the original store procedure is used by the customer application and you can’t change the source code, you can create a new store procedure that call the original one (without inserting into a table), and execute the insert on the new table executing a loop on the returned cursor.

B. Given below is a situation where you wanted to pass a mapping variable to a stored procedure transformation (it can either be connected or unconnected).

Connected Stored Procedure

The parameters that are passed to a connected Stored Procedure have to be linked from another transformation.
Given below are the steps to pass mapping variable to a connected Stored Procedure transformation:

1. Create an Expression transformation.
2. Create an output port in the Expression transformation with the following expression:

$$mapping_variable

This sets the value of this output port to the mapping variable.

1. Link this output port to the Stored Procedure transformation.

Unconnected Stored Procedure

For unconnected Stored Procedure transformations you can use the mapping variable in the expression calling the stored procedure.
Follow the steps below to pass mapping variable to a unconnected Stored Procedure transformation:

1. Create an Expression transformation.
2. Create an output port in the Expression transformation with the following expression:

: SP.GET_NAME_FROM_ID ($$mapping_variable, PROC_RESULT)

In case if you are attempting to use a mapping variable to store the output value of the stored procedure, the session will fail with the below error.

“TE_7002 Transformation Parse Fatal Error; transformation stopped: invalid function reference. Failed to Initialize Server Transformation.”

To resolve the issue replace the mapping variable with the PROC_RESULT system variable.

Example:

Incorrect, using a mapping variable:

:SP.PROCEDURE(FIELD1, $$mapping_variable)

Correct, using the PROC_RESULT system variable:

:SP.PROCEDURE(FIELD1,PROC_RESULT)

Or

:SP.PROCEDURE($$mapping_variable,PROC_RESULT)

The PROC_RESULT system variable assigns the stored procedure output to the port with this expression.

Read More about Informatica

Informatica PowerCenter 8x Key Concepts – 2

The PowerCenter Repository is one of best metadata storage among all ETL products. The repository is sufficiently normalized to store metadata at a very detail level; which in turn means the Updates to therepository are very quick and the overall Team-based Development is smooth. The repository data structure is also useful for the users to do analysis and reporting.

Accessibility to the repository through MX views and SDK kit extends the repositories capability from a simple storage of technical data to a database for analysis of the ETL metadata.

PowerCenter Repository is a collection of 355 tables which can be created on any major relational database. The kinds of information that are stored in the repository are,

1. Repository configuration details
2. Mappings
3. Workflows
4. User Security
5. Process Data of session runs

For a quick understanding,

When a user creates a folder, corresponding entries are made into table OPB_SUBJECT; attributes like folder name, owner id, type of the folder like shared or not are all stored.
When we create\import sources and define field names, datatypes etc in source analyzer entries are made into opb_src and OPB_SRC_FLD.
When target and related fields are created/imported from any database entries are made into tables like OPB_TARG and OPB_TARG_FLD.
Table OPB_MAPPING stores mapping attributes like Mapping Name, Folder Id, Valid status and mapping comments.
Table OPB_WIDGET stores attributes like widget type, widget name, comments etc. Widgets are nothing but the Transformations which Informatica internally calls them as Widgets.
Table OPB_SESSION stores configurations related to a session task and table OPB_CNX_ATTR stores information related to connection objects.
Table OPB_WFLOW_RUN stores process details like workflow name, workflow started time, workflow completed time, server node it ran etc.
REP_ALL_SOURCES, REP_ALL_TARGETS and REP_ALL_MAPPINGS are few of the many views created over these tables.

PowerCenter applications access the PowerCenter repository through the Repository Service. The Repository Service protects metadata in the repository by managing repository connections and using object-locking to ensure object consistency.

We can create a repository as global or local. We can go for‘global’ to store common objects that multiple developers can use through shortcuts and go for local repository to perform of development mappings and workflows. From a local repository, we can create shortcuts to objects in shared folders in the global repository. PowerCenter supports versioning. A versioned repository can store multiple versions of an object.

Read More about Informatica PowerCenter

Handling Oracle Exceptions

There may be requirements wherein certain oracle exceptions need to be treated as Warnings and certain exceptions need to be treated as Fatal.

Normally, a fatal Oracle error may not be registered as a warning or row error and the session may not fail, conversely a non-fatal error may cause a PowerCenter session to fail.This can be changed with few tweaking in

A. Oracle Stored Procedure

B. The Oracle ErrorActionFile and

C. Server Settings

Let us see this with an example.

An Oracle Stored Procedure under certain conditions returns the exception NO_DATA_FOUND. When this exception occurs, the session calling the Stored Procedure does not fail.

Adding an entry for this error in the ora8err.act file and enabling the OracleErrorActionFile option does not change this behavior (Both ora8err.act and OracleErrorActionFile are discussed in later part of this blog).

When this exception (NO_DATA_FOUND) is raised in PL/SQL it is sent to the Oracle client as an informational message not an error message and the Oracle client sends this message to PowerCenter. Since the Oracle client does not return an error to PowerCenter the session continues as normal and will not fail.

A. Modify the Stored Procedure to return a different exception or a custom exception. A custom exception number (only between -20000 and -20999) can be sent using the raise_application_error PL/SQL command as follows:

raise_application_error (-20991,’<stored procedure name> has raised an error’, true);

Additionally add the following entry to the ora8err.act file:

20991, F

B. Editing the Oracle Error Action file can be done as follows:

1. Go to the server/bin directory under the Informatica Services installation directory (8.x) or the Informatica Server installation directory (7.1.x).

E.g.,

For Infa 7.x

C:\Program Files\Informatica PowerCenter 7.1.3\Server\ora8err.act

For Infa 8.x

C:\Informatica\PowerCenter8.1.1\server\bin

2. Open the ora8err.act file.

3. Change the value associated with the error.
“F” is fatal and stops the session.
“R” is a row error and writes the row to the reject file and continues to the next row.

Examples:

To fail a session when the ORA-03114 error is encountered change the 03114 line in the file to the following:

03114, F

To return a row error when the ORA-02292 error is encountered change the 02292 line to the following:

02292, R

Note that the Oracle action file only applies to native Oracle connections in the session. If the target is using the SQL*Loader external loader option, the message status will not be modified by the settings in this file.

C. Once the file is modified, following changes need to be done in the server level.

Infa 8.x

Set the OracleErrorActionFile Integration Service Custom Property to the name of the file (ora8err.act by default) as follows:

1. Connect to the Administration Console.

2. Stop the Integration Service.

3. Select the Integration Service.

4. Under the Properties tab, click Edit in the Custom Properties section.

5. Under Name enter OracleErrorActionFile.

6. Enter ora8err.act for the parameter under Value.

7. Click OK.

8. Start the Integration Service.

PowerCenter 7.1.x

In PowerCenter 7.1.x do the following:

UNIX

For the server running on UNIX:

1. Using a text editor open the PowerCenter server configuration file (pmserver.cfg).

2. Add the following entry to the end of the file:

OracleErrorActionFile=ora8err.act

3. Re-start the PowerCenter server (pmserver).

Windows

For the server running on Windows:

1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and click OK.
2. Go to the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\
PowerMart\Parameters\Configuration

Select Edit; New; String Value. Enter the “OracleErrorActionFile” for the string value.
Select Edit; Modify.

Enter the directory and the file name of the Oracle error action file:

\ora8err.act

Example:

The default entry for PowerCenter 7.1.3 would be:
C:\Program Files\Informatica PowerCenter 7.1.3\Server\ora8err.act

And for PowerCenter8.1.1 it would be
C:\Informatica\PowerCenter8.1.1\server\bin

Click OK

Read More about Oracle

Informatica Exceptions – 3

Here are few more Exceptions:

1. There are occasions where sessions fail with the following error in the Workflow Monitor:

“First error code [36401], message [ERROR: Session task instance [session XXXX]: Execution terminated unexpectedly.] “

where XXXX is the session name.

The server log/workflow log shows the following:

“LM_36401 Execution terminated unexpectedly.”

To determine the error do the following:

a. If the session fails before initialization and no session log is created look for errors in Workflow log and pmrepagent log files.

b. If the session log is created and if the log shows errors like

“Caught a fatal signal/exception” or

“Unexpected condition detected at file [xxx] line yy”

then a core dump has been created on the server machine. In this case Informatica Technical Support should be contacted with specific details. This error may also occur when the PowerCenter server log becomes too large and the server is no longer able to write to it. In this case a workflow and session log may not be completed. Deleting or renaming the PowerCenter Server log (pmserver.log) file will resolve the issue.

2. Given below is not an exception but a scenario which most of us would have come across.

Rounding problem occurs with columns in the source defined as Numeric with Precision and Scale or Lookups fail to match on the same columns. Floating point arithmetic is always prone to rounding errors (e.g. the number 1562.99 may be represented internally as 1562.988888889, very close but not exactly the same). This can also affect functions that work with scale such as the Round() function. To resolve this do the following:

a. Select the Enable high precision option for the session.

b. Define all numeric ports as Decimal datatype with the exact precision and scale desired. When high precision processing is enabled the PowerCenter Server support numeric values up to 28 digits. However, the tradeoff is a performance hit (actual performance really depends on how many decimal ports there are).

Read More about Informatica

Exceptions in Informatica – 2

Let us see few more strange exceptions in Informatica

1. Sometimes the Session fails with the below error message.
“FATAL ERROR : Caught a fatal signal/exception
FATAL ERROR : Aborting the DTM process due to fatal signal/exception.”

There might be several reasons for this. One possible reason could be the way the function SUBSTR is used in the mappings, like the length argument of the SUBSTR function being specified incorrectly.
Example:

IIF(SUBSTR(MOBILE_NUMBER, 1, 1) = ‘9′,
SUBSTR(MOBILE_NUMBER, 2, 24),
MOBILE_NUMBER)

In this example MOBILE_NUMBER is a variable port and is 24 characters long.
When the field itself is 24 char long, the SUBSTR starts at position 2 and go for a length of 24 which is the 25th character.

To solve this, correct the length option so that it does not go beyond the length of the field or avoid using the length option to return the entire string starting with the start value.
Example:

In this example modify the expression as follows:

IIF(SUBSTR(MOBILE_NUMBER, 1, 1) = ‘9′,
SUBSTR(MOBILE_NUMBER, 2, 23),
MOBILE_NUMBER)

OR

IIF(SUBSTR(MOBILE_NUMBER, 1, 1) = ‘9′,
SUBSTR(MOBILE_NUMBER, 2),
MOBILE_NUMBER).

2. The following error can occur at times when a session is run

“TE_11015 Error in xxx: No matching input port found for output port OUTPUT_PORT TM_6006 Error initializing DTM for session…”

Where xxx is a Transformation Name.

This error will occur when there is corruption in the transformation.
To resolve this do one of the following: * Recreate the transformation in the mapping having this error.

3. At times you get the below problems,

1. When opening designer, you get “Exception access violation”, “Unexpected condition detected”.

2. Unable to see the navigator window, output window or the overview window in designer even after toggling it on.

3. Toolbars or checkboxes are not showing up correctly.

These are all indications that the pmdesign.ini file might be corrupted. To solve this, following steps need to be followed.

1. Close Informatica Designer
2. Rename the pmdesign.ini (in c:\winnt\system32 or c:\windows\system).
3. Re-open the designer.

When PowerMart opens the Designer, it will create a new pmdesign.ini if it doesn’t find an existing one. Even reinstalling the PowerMart clients will not create this file if it finds one.

Read More about Informatica 

Informatica PowerCenter 8x Key Concepts – 1

We shall look at the fundamental components of the Informatica PowerCenter 8.x Suite, the key components are

1. PowerCenter Domain
2. PowerCenter Repository
3. Administration Console
4. PowerCenter Client
5. Repository Service
6. Integration Service

PowerCenter Domain

A domain is the primary unit for management and administration of services in PowerCenter. Node, Service Manager and Application Services are components of a domain.

Node

Node is the logical representation of a machine in a domain. The machine in which the PowerCenter is installed acts as a Domain and also as a primary node. We can add other machines as nodes in the domain and configure the nodes to run application services such as the Integration Service or Repository Service. All service requests from other nodes in the domain go through the primary node also called as ‘master gateway’.

The Service Manager

The Service Manager runs on each node within a domain and is responsible for starting and running the application services. The Service Manager performs the following functions,

• Alerts. Provides notifications of events like shutdowns, restart
• Authentication. Authenticates user requests from the Administration Console, PowerCenter Client, Metadata Manager, and Data Analyzer
• Domain configuration. Manages configuration details of the domain like machine name, port
• Node configuration. Manages configuration details of a node metadata like machine name, port
• Licensing. When an application service connects to the domain for the first time the licensing registration is performed and for subsequent connections the licensing information is verified
• Logging. Manages the event logs from each service, the messages could be ‘Fatal’, ‘Error’, ‘Warning’, ‘Info’
• User management. Manages users, groups, roles, and privileges

Application services

The services that essentially perform data movement, connect to different data sources and manage data are called Application services, they are namely Repository Service, Integration Service, Web Services Hub, SAPBW Service, Reporting Service and Metadata Manager Service. The application services run on each node based on the way we configure the node and the application service

Domain Configuration

Some of the configurations for a domain involves assigning host name, port numbers to the nodes, setting up Resilience Timeout values, providing connection information of metadata Database, SMTP details etc. All the Configuration information for a domain is stored in a set of relational database tables within the repository. Some of the global properties that are applicable for Application Services like ‘Maximum Restart Attempts’, ‘Dispatch Mode’ as ‘Round Robin’/’Metric Based’/’Adaptive’ etc are configured under Domain Configuration

Read More about Informatica PowerCenter 8x 

Exceptions in Informatica

There exists no product/tool without strange exceptions/errors, we will see some of those exceptions.

1. You get the below error when you do “Generate SQL” in Source Qualifier and try to validate it.
“Query should return exactly n field(s) to match field(s) projected from the Source Qualifier”
Where n is the number of fields projected from the Source Qualifier.

Possible reasons for this to occur are:

1. The order of ports may be wrong
2. The number of ports in the transformation may be more/less.
3. Sometimes you will have the correct number of ports and in correct order too but even then you might face this error in that case make sure that Owner name and Schema name are specified correctly for the tables used in the Source Qualifier Query.
E.g., TC_0002.EXP_AUTH@TIMEP

2. The following error occurs at times when an Oracle table is used

“[/export/home/build80/zeusbuild/vobs/powrmart
/common/odl/oracle8/oradriver.cpp] line [xxx]”
Where xxx is some line number mostly 241, 291 or 416.

Possible reasons are

1. Use DataDirect Oracle ODBC driver instead of the driver “Oracle in
2. If the table has been imported using the Oracle drivers which are not supported, then columns with Varchar2 data type are replaced by String data type and Number columns are imported with precision Zero(0).

3. Recently I encountered the below error while trying to save a Mapping.

Unexpected Condition Detected
Warning: Unexpected condition at: statbar.cpp: 268
Contact Informatica Technical Support for assistance

When there is no enough memory in System this happens. To resolve this we can either

1. Increase the Virtual Memory in the system
2. If continue to receive the same error even after increasing the Virtual Memory, in Designer, go to ToolsàOptions, go to General tab and clear the “Save MX Data” option.

Read More about Informatica

What is Informatica?

Informatica is a data integration platform, some of the key characteristics of Informatica that stand out are the

1. ETL process components and the user interface
2. Metadata
3. Wider data handling

ETL process components and the user interface

Datastage was the first GUI based data integration platform with an engine at its core, Informatica was probably designed & built to overcome some of the issues faced in using the Datastage. Informatica’s initial ETL product PoweMart’s Visual C++ based user interface was much appealing and easier to use than the Visual Basic based interface of Datastage. The port level view of the transformations/widgets made things much easier to view. The simple transformations like Filter, Update Strategy helped ETL developers to easily convert their design ideas into mappings. For every release there are definitive enhancements being done to improve the developer experience.

Metadata

Informatica has set standards into terms of either collecting or exposing the Metadata of an ETL process. The metadata of Informatica is stored in relational structure and is easily accessible directly or through its MX Views or through the SDK kit. The detail in capturing the ETL process into multiple components has enabled the product to introduce much better features or integrate newer solutions like data lineage or data type propagation or reusability that are not easily possible in other competitor products. The level of metadata capture right from mapping to transformation to the port level ensured that data about the process is captured at all levels and that no separate documentation is to be maintained outside the system.

Wider data handling

Unquestionably Informatica has made some great products available at the right time, something like mainframe access component which it acquired through Striva Inc still remains as the best mainframe access, and if you would have used the MVS edition of Datastage you would have seen its code generation based mainframe support. Informatica’s successful take on the ‘ELT’ based database engine products by introducing the ‘Push Down Optimization’ are great examples on how the platform has been flexible and agile to get itself extended in regular product updates.

Now Informatica is also a complete ‘data governance’ platform it provides the tools like data profiling or data quality management or the recent one identity systems solution integration. ‘Informatica Way’ has been to always make complex things look simpler and easily manageable.

We would discuss further on many more topics related to the Informatica platform right from simple tips to solution options, keep reading…Thank You.

Read More about Informatica