All Important Things About Informatica Developer Tool

Informatica Introduction :-

Informatica Developer Tool- Informatics developer was developed by Informatica Corporation in the year 1993. This company is well known for data integration product Power Centre. Informatics Developer is a tool where data quality plans or maps are developed. It is a software development kit (SDK) with set of API’s to extend the functionality of power centre platform. Informatica tool contains all the transformation of power centre related to data quality.

What is Informatica used for ?

Data integration is all that you do with Informatica tool. And you can do it more better than anyone in the market using this tool.

Informatica tool is most commonly known as Informatics PowerCentre. This tool supports all the process of extraction, transformation and load process of data. Informatica offers applications for the following data integration areas

Data Migration
Data Synchronization
Data Warehousing
Data Hubs
Data Marts
Master Data Management (MDM)
Business Intelligence Reporting
Business Activity Monitoring (BAM)

Informatica Developer Tool

Informatica developer tool is a eclipse based development environment which enhances the data quality developer’s productivity. It helps architects and developers to find and access data sources regardless of where the source data is located. It also helps to improve the process of analyzing, profiling, validating and cleansing data.

Objectives of Informatica

Informatica developer replaces the traditional Informatica data quality.

Helps you to create and understand basic mappings (moving data from inputs and outputs), basic objects and export procedures
Helps to observe the load process and analyze results for knowing the success ratio
Meet out the connectivity requirements to get data from different sources
Helps you to profile your data, create score cards and address validation

Features of Informatica

Open ended system

Informatica is a open ended system that supports multiple platforms and multiple data management environment.

Metadata repository

Informatica sessions can be arranged in folders based on the worklets and work flows. This leads to an environment which is easy to maintain and quicker to analyze and enhance

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Universal connectivity to data sources

This tool enables easy access and cleansing of any type of data from any source and in any mode within the enterprise or in partner’s system or in the cloud or in Hadoop.

Flexibility

Informatica is an independent player to solve to solve customers’ problems. There is no proprietary system to protect and no set of standards to impose. It offers you the choice to choose what works best for your environment.

Job monitoring and recovery

Informatica lets you to monitor the jobs easily by means of Informatica Workflow Monitor. It also lets you restart failure jobs from particular row or step. Informatica also lets you discover and recover the failed jobs

Informatica Marketplace

Informatica market place contains lot of tools and accelerators to improve the application support

Supports various platforms

Informatica acts as connectors to various databases including Teradata mLoad, tPump, FastLoad and Parallel Transporter.

There are also few connectors for which you need to invest an extra cost. One example of such source is social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and others.

Shareable bookmarks and notes

Informatica enables its team members and business to share the data profiles and quality cards easily through bookmarks and providing comments in notes section.

Market leader

Informatica is the market’s leading data integration platform. It provides to its customers what they want and a data integration solution that can integrate with more data from various sources and in a very minimum time and effort.

Innovative

Informatica is known for its innovation. Its data integration platform is developed to meet the challenging data integration requirements. It has a architectural approach and has a consistent record of delivering solid technologies to its customers. Thus it attracts many customers.

Industry Leading Support

Informatica has developed a support organization which offers superior service. The support team has developed a clear set of rules and procedures to approach a problem and find a solution for that. The support system has a centralized call logging and tracking system that will help in arranging the issues based on its priority and severity.

Advantages of Informatica

Informatica is a tool that acts as a single platform for data quality
It helps in improving the data analyzing, profiling, validating and cleansing data
This tool enhances the productivity of the business through its IT collaboration tools and data quality development environment
It helps you connect with all the data sources located widely
It reduces the license and maintenance costs
Supports multiple projects and project types
This tool helps you to develop address standardizations, exception handling and data masking. It also integrates all these with PowerCentre to make use of them as components or mapplets
It helps to identify, solve and prevent data quality problems
It supports each and every role of data integration projects like data stewards, data analysts, architects and developers
Informatica offers effective data profiling and effective ways to share the results of your business
Through this tool data becomes more trusted
Informatica contains centralized data quality rules for all applications
All the reference data can be again used for all types of data integration projects such as data migration, data consolidation and MDM
It meets out the four basic needs of the customers – Need to be comprehensive, Need to be open, Need to be unified and Need to be economical
It offers whatever you need related to data integration like data quality, data migration, data archiving, data consolidation, data synchronization and many others
Informatica works with your existing systems, application and technology standards
Lower maintenance costs, more stable operations and faster response to business conditions
Achieve better business outcome and maximize the return on data

Installation & Configuration of Informatica developer platform

Prerequisites to install Informatica Developer Tool

Create a Model Repository service
Create a Data Integration service
Download and Install appropriate version of Informatica Developer platform tool that matches your PowerCentre version from Informatica Communities website.

Steps to create Model repository service

If you installed the Informatica services and Informatica client separately, you should add the domain and Model repository the first time you set up the developer tool

In the developer tool menu click File à Connect to Repository
The Connect to Repository dialog box appears
Click Configure Domains
The Preferences Dialog Box appears
Click Add. The New Domain dialog box appears
Enter the Domain Name, Host Name and Port Number for the domain
Click Test Connection to test the connection whether it is successful
Click Finish
The domain name appears in the Available Domains Panel as shown below
Click Ok
The Connect to repository dialog box appears
Select Browse. This will lead to choose service dialog box.
Expand the domain and select the model repository as shown in the picture below
Click Ok and Click Next. Login Window appears. Enter the username and password.
Click Finish. The developer tool connects to the Model Repository with a sample project.

Steps to create Data Integration Service

Login to Informatica Administrator
Select the domain which you want to use
Go to actions
Select Create New Data Integration Service
Name the Data Integration and provide the appropriate details like the port number, data base credentials, etc
Click Finish

The following figure shows the selected default data integration service

Now you can get connected to model repository and start working on it following these steps

Create a connection through File à Connection
Configure the domain by providing the Host name, Domain name and Port
After successful configuration you will be shown the model repository name
Double click on it and provide user credentials
Now you are all set to work on your projects using this tool

If the Informatica developer tool is installed in a local machine then start the tool using Windows Start menu. If the tool is installed in a remote machine use the command line to start the tool.

Starting developer tool on a local machine

Go to All programs à Informatica PowerCenter Express à Launch Informatica Developer
Select Workbench

Starting developer tool on a remote machine

Open the command prompt
Enter the command to start the tool. You can either use the default local workspace directory or override the default directory
Click Workbench

Informatica Developer User Interface

The Informatica developer workbench includes an editor and views. In the editor section you can edit objects such as mappings. The views section displays views such as

Outline View – This appears in the bottom left corner of the tool and displays objects that are dependent on an object selected in the Object Explorer view
Object Explorer view – This view appears in the top left area of the tool and it displays projects, folders and the objects within them
Connection explorer view – This appears on the top right area of the developer tool and it displays connections to relational databases
Properties view – This view appears in the bottom area of the tool and displays the properties for an object that is in focus by the editor

There are also lot of other views

Cheat Sheets View
Data Viewer View
Help View
Progress View
Search View
Tags View
Validation Log View

Informatica Developer Welcome Page

The welcome page of the tool displays the following options

Overview – Includes the steps to begin using PowerCentre Express
Tutorials – Leads you to see cheat sheets for data integration tasks
Web Resources – Links to Informatica resources that you can access on the web

Cheat Sheets are step by step guide that helps you complete the tasks in the developer tool.

Informatica Preferences

The Preferences dialog box contains the settings for the developer tool and for the Eclipse Platform. To go to Informatica Preferences , Click on Windows à Preferences à Informatica. Informatica supports only the Informatica Preferences.

Informatica Marketplace

The Informatica Marketplace provides solutions to extend or enhance the data integration implementation. You should register as a user before you log in to the marketplace for the first time.

After logging in you can find pre built solutions like mappings, mapping objects, profiles or workflows that you can use in the developer tool

Objects in Informatica Developer

The following Model Repository Objects can be created in the developer tool

Application
Folder
Logical Data Objects
Logical Data Object Mapping
Logical Data Object Model
Mapping
Mapplet
Physical Data Object
Profile
Rule
Transformation
Workflow

Projects

A project is the top level container where you can store folders and objects in the developer tool. You can manage and view projects in the Object Explorer View. The created projects are stored in the model repository. The tasks performed on a project are listed below

Manage Projects
Filter Projects
Manage Folders
Manage Objects
Search Objects
Assign Permissions

How to create a project

File à New à Project
Enter a name for the project
Click Next à Project Permission Page appears
Select a User or group and assign permissions
Select Finish

How to create a Folder

File à New à Folder
Enter a name for the folder
Click Finish

Workspace Editor

The editor is used to view or edit the objects in Model Repository model.

You can configure the following options in the editor

Align All to Grid
Arrange All
Arrange All Iconic
Iconized View
Maximize Active View or Editor
Minimize Active View or Editor
Normal View
Reset Perspective
Resize

Validation Preferences

You can always limit the number of error messages through the Validation log View. You can also group error messages based on object or object type.

Grouping Error Messages

To group error messages

Select Menu à Group By à Select Object or Object Type

To remove error messages group

Select Menu à Group By à None

Limiting Error Messages

Click Window à Preferences
Select Informatica à Validation
Set the error limit and configure the number of items that appear
The default value is 100. To restore click Restore Defaults
Click Apply à Ok

Copy

You can copy objects within a project or to a different project or to folders within a project or folders in a different project. You can also save copies of the objects with different names.

To copy

Select an object
Select Edit à Copy
Select the destination project or folder
Click Edit à Paste

To Save a copy of the object

Open an object in the editor
Select File à Save As Copy As
Enter a name
Click Browse to select the destination project or folder
Click Finish

Conclusion

Hope this article would have helped you to know the basics of Informatica Developer Tool and how to get started with it. If it’s your turn to choose, then now is the time to choose Informatica.

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