Informatica Powermart

Sessions & Batches

By Partha Sarathi Seth

Informatica Powermart Sessions & Batches

Declaration
I hereby declare that this document is based on my personal experiences and/or
experiences of my project members. To the best of my knowledge, this document does
not contain any material that infringes the copyrights of any other individual or
organization including the customers of Infosys.

Partha Sarathi Seth

(Parthasarathi_s@infosys.com)

Target readers
ALL

Keywords
Informatica, Powermart, Batch, Session

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Informatica Powermart Sessions & Batches

Table of Contents

Introduction to Powermart......................................................................................................4
Sessions...................................................................................................................................4
Creating a Session...............................................................................................................4
General Attributes...............................................................................................................4
Time....................................................................................................................................9
Log Files............................................................................................................................11
Transformations................................................................................................................12
Batch.....................................................................................................................................13
Batch Attributes.................................................................................................................14
Event Based Scheduling........................................................................................................16
Reference..............................................................................................................................18

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Informatica Powermart Sessions & Batches

Introduction to Powermart

Informatica Powermart is an ETL tool that Extracts, Transforms and Loads data from
source to target. It involves various individual transformations that perform several types
of operations to convert, cleanse and integrate source data before loading into the target.

Powermart 5.1 provides a Designer, Server Manager and Repository Manager.

• Designer – It provides an environment to build Mappings and Mapplets.

• Server Manager – Among other functions, it helps in creating sessions and
batches.
• Repository Manager – It helps in the maintenance of the Repository.

A Mapping contains the data flow between a source and a target. It contains Source
definition, Transformation, Target definition and Connectors.

A Mapplet is a set of transformations. It is created as a reusable object in various

Mappings.

Sessions

In short, a Session executes a Mapping. A session contains additional information viz.,

Source, Destination, Log Files, Error Files, Schedule, etc.

Creating a Session

A session is created for every mapping that needs to be executed. The Session Manager
provides a Session wizard to enter the session attributes.

Go to Operations → Add Session in the menu and select the Mapping to invoke the
Session wizard.

General Attributes

1. Enter the session name. Generally, the session is named on the mapping name
preceded by an ‘S’.
2. Select the Source type.

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3. Select the Source database name. You will have to configure the database details
for the first time. (Menu: Server Configuration → Database Connections, Add a
new connection).
4. Source Options: Enter the location of the file (if the source is a file) or enter the
database name, if the source is a table.

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5. Select the target type.

6. Target Options: Following options will be provided.
• Insert – If this option is selected, all the rows flagged for insert will be
inserted.
• Update (as update) – If this option is selected, all the rows flagged for
update will be updated.
• Update (as insert) – If this option is selected, all the rows flagged for
update will be inserted.
• Update (else insert) – If this option is selected, all the rows flagged for
update will be updated, if it exists in the target, else it will be inserted.
• Delete – If this option is selected, all the rows flagged for delete will be
deleted.
• Truncate Table - If this option is selected, the table is truncated before
upload.

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7. Reject Options: Enter the location of the Reject file. This file will hold all the
rejected record.

8. Pre-Session Commands: The Server Manager provides option to write Pre-

Session UNIX scripts, which will be executed before the execution the Session.
This option is very useful if you have to process or format the source file before
the session is executed.

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9. Post Session Commands and Email: Similar to the Pre-Session commands, the
Server manager provides option to write post-session UNIX scripts. This is a very
useful option if you have event-based scheduling (I will elaborate on event-based
scheduling, later in the document). In addition to this, the Server manager also
provides Email options, which are triggered on success or failure of a session.

10. Configuration Parameters: In the Event based scheduling section, enter the
location of the Event file and the Event file name.

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Time

The Server Manager provides several options when it comes to scheduling a Session.

• Run only on demand – If this option is selected, then the session would execute
only when you manually start the session.
• Run once – If this option is selected, then the “Start Date” section is enabled and
you will be able to schedule the session to run only once for a particular day and
time.
• Run every – If this option is enabled, then the “Day-Minutes-Hours” section will
be enabled and you will be able to run the frequency
• Customised Repeat – It this option is enabled, then the session executes based
on the dates and times specified in the Repeat dialog.
• Run continuously – If this option is enabled, the session restarts after every
completion of execution.

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The Customised repeat option is the most flexible of all the available options. On click of
the edit button, the Repeat dialog opens.

You can define a Daily, Weekly or a Monthly schedule.

In Daily schedule, you can either select “Run once” or “Run every” options.

In Weekly schedule, you can select the day or days of the week on which you would like
to schedule the session.

In Monthly schedule, you can either select “Run on a day”, like 1 st and 31st of every
month, or select “Run on the”, like Last Monday of every month. If you schedule the
session to run on 31st of every month, the Server manager automatically schedules the
session on the last day of the month in cases where the months have less than 31 days.

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Log Files

The Log file Path and the name have to be entered in this dialog. The Sever manager
provides us option to either save the session logs by timestamp or specify the number of
log files to retain. In the latter case, the server manager suffixes numbers (from 0) to
the log files names.

You can also specify the parameter file name and location.

In Batch handling, you can select

• Run always – If this option is selected, the session will be executed even if the
previous session in the batch has failed.
• Run if Previously Completed – If this option is selected, the session will be
executed only if the previous session in the batch has completed successfully.

The server manager also provides several error handling options.

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Transformations

In the Session level override for Transformation, you can override the attributes of a
mapping transformation.

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On successful creation of a Session, the session appears with the following details.

Note: A Session or a Batch can also be started from the command line using a ‘pmcmd’
command. The ‘pmcmd’ can be embedded into a shell script and scheduled using any of
scheduling tools like ‘cron tab’.

Batch

Batches help in grouping sessions for either sequential or parallel execution. There are
two types of Batches.

Sequential Batch – It executes sessions one after the other.

Concurrent Batch – It executes sessions in parallel.

As in case of Sessions, the Session Manager also provides a Batch wizard to enter the
Batch attributes. The Batch attributes override the session attributes.

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Go to Operations → Add Batch in the menu to invoke the Batch wizard.

Batch Attributes

Enter the Batch Name and the location of the parameter file. Check on the “Concurrent”
check box to make it a concurrent batch. By default, the batch will be sequential batch.

The Scheduling process is exactly the same as in the case of a session. The Batch
scheduling will override the session scheduling.

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The following example explains how a Batch works. We have 6 sessions, s_Test0,
s_Test1, s_Test2, s_Test3, s_Test4 and s_Test5.

• The parent batch is Sequential_Test_Batch.

• Session s_Test0, batch Concurrent_Test_Batch and Session s_Test5 are
sequential.
• Batches Sequential_Test_Batch_01 and Sequential_Test_Batch_01 will run in
parallel.
• Sessions s_Test1 and s_Test2 are sequential.
• Sessions s_Test3 and s_Test4 are also sequential.

All sessions and/or batches inside a sequential batch will run sequentially. All sessions
and/or batches inside a concurrent batch will run in parallel.

In the above example, when the Batch Sequential_Test_Batch is started, s_Test0 is

executed first. On completion of s_Test0, the Concurrent_Test_Batch starts, and hence
batches Sequential_Test_Batch_01 and Sequential_Test_Batch_02 executes in parallel.
But s_Test2 starts only after the completion of s_Test1. Similarly, s_Test4 starts only

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after the completion of s_Test3. Session s_Test5 starts only after completion of sessions
s_Test2 and s_Test4.

Event Based Scheduling

In case of Event based scheduling, the session waits for an event/indicator file at a
specific location in the server. When the file arrives, the session starts and it deletes the
event file.

When you create a session, you will have to enter the Event file name and location in the
“Event based scheduling” area.

Now, if you start the session manually, the Server manager waits for the event file to
appear in the specified location before running the session. If you schedule the session,
the server manager first waits for the scheduled time to arrive and then for the event file.

When the session waits for the scheduled time, the session would appear “Scheduled”
status in the Server manager Monitor. When the session waits for the event file, the
session would appear in “File wait” status in the monitor.

The Event based scheduling is very useful when you have to execute two or more
independent batches in sequence.

For example I have 4 independent batches, Batch1, Batch2, Batch3 and Batch4. The
following figure shows the process flow.

All the batches are scheduled to run at 10:00 hrs every day, but Batch2, Batch3 and
Batch4 have event file dependencies as well.

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Batch1 Every Day at 10:00 hrs

Event File 1

Batch2 Every Day at 10:00 hrs

Event File 2A Event File 2B

Batch3 Batch4

Every Day at 10:00 hrs Every Day at 10:00 hrs

At 10:00 hrs, Batch1 starts execution, whereas Batch2, Batch3 and Batch4 go to the “File
wait” status. The last session of Batch1 will have to contain a script to create the event
file in the “Post Session Command” dialog. Similarly, the last session of the Batch2 will
have to contain scripts to create event files 2A and 2B.

On Successful completion of Batch1 and the creation of the Event File 1, Batch2 starts its
execution. Batch2 creates Event File 2A and 2B before completion. Batch3 and Batch4
will start as soon as it finds event files 2A and 2B, respectively.

Note: The Server manager doesn’t look into the content of the event file.

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It is always a nice practice to have dummy sessions at the start and end of an
independent batch and is scheduled to run sequentially. All Event file related post
processing could be handled in the dummy session.

Reference

• Server Manager Online help.

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