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

• 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

1. In the developer tool menu click File à Connect to Repository
2. The Connect to Repository dialog box appears
3. Click Configure Domains
4. The Preferences Dialog Box appears
5. Click Add. The New Domain dialog box appears
6. Enter the Domain Name, Host Name and Port Number for the domain
7. Click Test Connection to test the connection whether it is successful
8. Click Finish
9. The domain name appears in the Available Domains Panel as shown below
10. Click Ok
11. The Connect to repository dialog box appears
12. Select Browse. This will lead to choose service dialog box.
13. Expand the domain and select the model repository as shown in the picture below
14. Click Ok and Click Next. Login Window appears. Enter the username and password.
15. 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

Tags

Tag is metadata that defines an object based on business usage. You can create a tag, associate the tag, remove the association, search for tags and display glossary of all tags.

You can create tags using Preference dialog box or Tag views for an object

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.