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is a tool, supporting all the steps of Extraction, Transformation and Load process.
Now a days Informatica is also being used as an Integration tool.

Informatica is an easy to use tool. It has got a simple visual interface like forms in visual basic.
You just need to drag and drop different objects (known as transformations) and design process
flow for Data extraction transformation and load. These process flow diagrams are known as

. Once a mapping is made, it can be scheduled to run as and when required. In the
background Informatica server takes care of fetching data from source, transforming it, &
loading it to the target systems/databases.

Informatica can communicate with all major data sources (mainframe/RDBMS/Flat

Files/XML/VSM/SAP etc), can move/transform data between them. It can move huge volumes
of data in a very effective way, many a times better than even bespoke programs written for
specific data movement only. It can throttle the transactions (do big updates in small chunks to
avoid long locking and filling the transactional log). It can effectively join data from two distinct
data sources (even a xml file can be joined with a relational table). In all, Informatica has got the
ability to effectively integrate heterogeneous data sources & converting raw data into useful
information.

Before we start actually working in Informatica, letº have an idea about the company owning
this wonderful product.

Some facts and figures about Informatica Corporation:

O Founded in 1993, based in Redwood City, California

O 1400+ Employees; 3450 + Customers; 79 of the Fortune 100 Companies
O NASDAQ Stock Symbol: INFA; Stock Price: $18.74 (09/04/2009)
O Revenues in fiscal year 2008: $455.7M
O Informatica Developer Networks: 20000 Members

Informatica >> Interview Questions




 





Q. What type of repositories can be created using Informatica Repository Manager?

Q. What is a code page?
Q. Which all databases PowerCenter Server on Windows can connect to?
Q. Which all databases PowerCenter Server on UNIX can connect to?






Q. How to execute PL/SQL script from Informatica mapping?
Q. How can you define a transformation? What are different types of transformations available
in Informatica?
Q. What is a source qualifier? What is meant by Query Override?
Q. What is aggregator transformation?
Q. What is Incremental Aggregation?
Q. How Union Transformation is used?
Q. Can two flat files be joined with Joiner Transformation?
Q. What is a look up transformation?
Q. Can a lookup be done on Flat Files?
Q. What are Connected and Unconnected Lookups?
Q. What is a mapplet?
Q. What does reusable transformation mean?
Q. What is update strategy and what are the options for update strategy?




 





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A. Informatica PowerCenter includeds following type of repositories :

O Standalone Repository : A repository that functions individually and this is unrelated to

any other repositories.
O lobal Repository : This is a centralized repository in a domain. This repository can
contain shared objects across the repositories in a domain. The objects are shared through
global shortcuts.
O Local Repository : Local repository is within a domain and itº not a global repository.
Local repository can connect to a global repository using global shortcuts and can use
objects in itº shared folders.
O Versioned Repository : This can either be local or global repository but it allows version
control for the repository. A versioned repository can store multiple copies, or versions of
an object. This features allows to efficiently develop, test and deploy metadata in the
production environment.

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A. A code page contains encoding to specify characters in a set of one or more languages. The
code page is selected based on source of the data. For example if source contains Japanese text
then the code page should be selected to support Japanese text.

When a code page is chosen, the program or application for which the code page is set, refers to
a specific set of data that describes the characters the application recognizes. This influences the
way that application stores, receives, and sends character data.
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A. PowerCenter Server on Windows can connect to following databases:

O IBM DB2
O Informix
O Microsoft Access
O Microsoft Excel
O Microsoft SQL Server
O Oracle
O Sybase
O Teradata

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A. PowerCenter Server on UNIX can connect to following databases:

O IBM DB2
O Informix
O Oracle
O Sybase
O Teradata

 






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A. Stored Procedure (SP) transformation can be used to execute PL/SQL Scripts. In SP

Transformation PL/SQL procedure name can be specified. Whenever the session is executed, the
session will call the pl/sql procedure.

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A. A transformation is a repository object that generates, modifies, or passes data. The Designer
provides a set of transformations that perform specific functions. For example, an Aggregator
transformation performs calculations on groups of data. Below are the various transformations
available in Informatica:

O Aggregator
O Application Source Qualifier
O Custom
O Expression
O External Procedure
O Filter
O Input
 O Joiner
O Lookup
O Normalizer
O Output
O Rank
O Router
O Sequence enerator
O Sorter
O Source Qualifier
O Stored Procedure
O Transaction Control
O Union
O Update Strategy
O XML enerator
O XML Parser
O XML Source Qualifier

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A. Source Qualifier represents the rows that the PowerCenter Server reads from a relational or
flat file source when it runs a session. When a relational or a flat file source definition is added to
a mapping, it is connected to a Source Qualifier transformation.

PowerCenter Server generates a query for each Source Qualifier Transformation whenever it
runs the session. The default query is SELET statement containing all the source columns.
Source Qualifier has capability to override this default query by changing the default settings of
the transformation properties. The list of selected ports or the order they appear in the default
query should not be changed in overridden query.

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A. The Aggregator transformation allows performing aggregate calculations, such as averages

and sums. Unlike Expression Transformation, the Aggregator transformation can only be used to
perform calculations on groups. The Expression transformation permits calculations on a row-
by-row basis only.

Aggregator Transformation contains group by ports that indicate how to group the data. While
grouping the data, the aggregator transformation outputs the last row of each group unless
otherwise specified in the transformation properties.

Various group by functions available in Informatica are : AV, COUNT, FIRST, LAST, MAX,
MEDIAN, MIN, PERCENTILE, STDDEV, SUM, VARIANCE.

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A. Whenever a session is created for a mapping Aggregate Transformation, the session option
for Incremental Aggregation can be enabled. When PowerCenter performs incremental
aggregation, it passes new source data through the mapping and uses historical cache data to
perform new aggregation calculations incrementally.

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A. The union transformation is a multiple input group transformation that can be used to merge
data from various sources (or pipelines). This transformation works just like UNION ALL
statement in SQL, that is used to combine result set of two SELECT statements.


 
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A. Yes, joiner transformation can be used to join data from two flat file sources.

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A. This transformation is used to lookup data in a flat file or a relational table, view or synonym.
It compares lookup transformation ports (input ports) to the source column values based on the
lookup condition. Later returned values can be passed to other transformations.



 -  .
.

A. Yes.

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A. Connected lookup takes input values directly from other transformations in the pipleline.

Unconnected lookup doesnº take inputs directly from any other transformation, but it can be
used in any transformation (like expression) and can be invoked as a function using :LKP
expression. So, an unconnected lookup can be called multiple times in a mapping.

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A. A mapplet is a reusable object that is created using mapplet designer. The mapplet contains
set of transformations and it allows us to reuse that transformation logic in multiple mappings.

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A. Reusable transformations can be used multiple times in a mapping. The reusable

transformation is stored as a metadata separate from any other mapping that uses the
transformation. Whenever any changes to a reusable transformation are made, all the mappings
where the transformation is used will be invalidated.

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A. Informatica processes the source data row-by-row. By default every row is marked to be
inserted in the target table. If the row has to be updated/inserted based on some logic Update
Strategy transformation is used. The condition can be specified in Update Strategy to mark the
processed row for update or insert.

Following options are available for update strategy :

O DD_INSERT : If this is used the Update Strategy flags the row for insertion. Equivalent
numeric value of DD_INSERT is 0.
O DD_UPDATE : If this is used the Update Strategy flags the row for update. Equivalent
numeric value of DD_UPDATE is 1.
O DD_DELETE : If this is used the Update Strategy flags the row for deletion. Equivalent
numeric value of DD_DELETE is 2.
O DD_REJECT : If this is used the Update Strategy flags the row for rejection. Equivalent
numeric value of DD_REJECT is 3.

O Webinar: The 38 Subsystems for ETL by Dr Ralph Kimball

O Interesting whitepaper: Alternative of ETL, E-LT