Introduction to Informatica ETL Tools
In the era of data, where data warehouses are considered as the backbone of the industry, ETL tools play an important role in data warehouses. Before understanding about Informatica ETL tool, let’s first understand what is meant by ETL. ETL refers to extraction, transformation, and loading, so ETL is a combination of three database functions, that are used to extract data from one database and load it into another database. The tool offered by Informatica for ETL purposes is Informatica Power Center. Informatica Power Center helps in the extraction of data from the source, then transformation of the extracted data as per business requirements and then loading the transformed data to the desired data warehouse.
Informatica is a software development organization that deals in Data Integration products. Informatica provides products on ETL, Data Quality, Data Replica, Virtualisation, etc. These products help in the workflow of data warehouses. Informatica Power Center is one of the ETL tools of Informatica Corporation. It runs on the same process of Extract, Transfer, and Load but as an add-on, it has in-built concepts of data validation, data cleaning at the time of extracting the data. It transfers the data by modifying according to the business queries and it is assigned with dimensional keys for loading the data onto a data warehouse.
How Does ETL Work with Informatica?
Let’s move to the various process of ETL.
1. Extraction
- Informatica Power Center first reads the data thoroughly from single or multiple tables of a database or a file.
- This database is now known as the source.
- The overall structure of this source is kept in a source definition object.
2. Transformation
- The power Center now converts the rows to a certain format which can be used by the Target.
- The logic of this conversion is defined in the transformation objects.
3. Loading
- Now the Informatica Power Center writes the data completely to a table or multiple tables in a database or a file.
- This database or file is now known as the target.
- The structure of the target is now kept in the target definition object.
Key Features of Informatica Power Center
Let’s now understand the key features of Informatica Power Center:
- Informatica acts as a primary unit for every administration and management needs.
- Power Center is a repository that is under a relational database, these are the tables that are used to extract, transform and load the data.
- Informatica Administrator is a web application used for securing the information and administrating the domain.
- All of the configured information of the domain is stored under domain configuration.
- Power Center Integration Service helps in reading and managing the integration’s workflow which eventually helps in creating multiple integrations according to the business requirements.
- Web Services helps in providing the primary functionalities of the product to the Clients.
- SAP BW Service helps in the data extraction from multiple sources and loading all of the data extracted to the SAP Netweaver BI.
Now let us understand the reasons behind the success of Informatica ETL Tools in the current market:
- One of the reasons that why ETL tools are a success is its capability of permitting Lean Corporation. The most common aim for any Production Company is to avoid waste and that can be done through Slim manufacturing and Informatica leverages the same kind of integration product.
- Informatica claims the best ratio of effective implementation, which tends to 100%.
- The instructions and the software accessibility is are far easier than the other ETL processes and it benefits any organization in decreasing the Training Costs and even its quite easy to add up new employees for this software.
- Informatica stands ahead of its competitions as it is not too costly and even the ease of use it provides to the clients makes it an excellent ETL tool.
Benefits of Informatica ETL
Now, let us check what are the benefits Informatica provides to its users:
1. Integration
Informatica is one of the best data integration platforms. Data Integration can be done for a huge amount of data and from multiple sources in lesser time than any other ETL tool. Informatica’s data integration tool can work over the widest range of systems and platforms. As discussed earlier in this article, Informatica also enables the capability of lean integration.
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2. High Performance
Informatica uses one of the best technology to enhance the performance in terms of quality and speed. Moreover, it also helps in optimizing the cost which eventually helps the organization in transforming the Business through automation, reusability and debugging. Informatica also creates an environment that is very friendly with the analysts which helps them to do quick and efficient analysis. It also balances the load between the database box and the ETL server which becomes beneficial for performing tasks in difficult situations.
3. Supports Different Databases of Different Data Types
Informatica provides constant support connection to multiple databases like TPump, Teradata MLoad, Parallel Transporter Fastload, etc. It also supports various data types which help in the flexibility of extracting more enterprise data.
4. Easy Maintenance
It is very much easy to monitor the work process using Informatica Workflow Monitor. Informatica Workflow Monitor simplifies the process of identifying and recovering from failed or slow running jobs. It has a great ability to restart from a stoppage or a failure. It has several features like automatic job logging and runtime monitoring which makes it perfect for BI managed services.
5. Error Handling
Informatica has a centralized error logging system that logs errors and rejects the data into relational tables which helps in correcting the errors by the technical team. As from the above discussion we got to know that Informatica Power Centre is a powerful tool for data extraction, data transformation and data loading to the desired destination and because of it’s unique key features it is widely used in data warehouses, which in itself is a great technology for data storage.
