sAdvanced External Procedure Transformation

Advanced External Procedure transformation is an Active and Connected transformation. It operates in conjunction with procedures, which are created outside of the Designer interface to extend PowerCenter/PowerMart functionality. It is useful in creating external transformation applications, such as sorting and aggregation, which require all input rows to be processed before emitting any output rows.

Differences between Advanced External Procedure and External Procedure Transformations:

1) External Procedure returns single value, whereas Advanced External Procedure returns multiple values.

2) External Procedure supports COM and Informatica procedures whereas Advanced External Procedure supports only Informatica Procedures.

Aggregator Transformation Aggregator transformation is an Active and Connected transformation. This transformation is useful to perform calculations such as averages and sums (mainly to perform calculations on multiple rows or groups). For example, to calculate total of daily sales or to calculate average of monthly or yearly sales. Aggregate functions such as AVG, FIRST, COUNT, PERCENTILE, MAX, SUM etc. can be used in aggregate transformation. Expression Transformation Expression transformation is a Passive and Connected transformation. This can be used to calculate values in a single row before writing to the target. For example, to calculate discount of each product

or to concatenate first and last names or to convert date to a string field.

External Procedure Transformation

External Procedure transformation is an Active andConnected/UnConnected transformations. Sometimes, the standard transformations such as Expression transformation may not provide the functionality that you want. In such cases External procedure is useful to develop complex functions within a dynamic link library (DLL) or UNIX shared library, instead of creating the necessary Expression transformations in a mapping.

Filter Transformation Filter transformation is an Active and Connected transformation. This can be used to filter rows in a mapping that do not meet the condition. For example, To know all the employees who are working in Department 10 or To find out the products that falls between the rate category $500 and $1000.

Informatica Informatica is a powerful ETL tool from Informatica Corporation, a leading provider of enterprise data integration software and ETL softwares.

The important Informatica Components are:

Power Exchange Power Center

Power Center Connect Power Exchange Power Channel Metadata Exchange Power Analyzer Super Glue

In Informatica, all the Metadata information about source systems, target systems and transformations are stored in the Informatica repository. Informatica's Power Center Client and Repository Server access this repository to store and retrieve metadata.

Source and Target:

Consider a Bank that has got many branches throughout the world. In each branch data may be stored in different source systems like oracle, sql server, terradata, etc.

When the Bank decides to integrate its data from several sources for its management decisions, it may choose one or more systems like oracle, sql server, terradata, etc. as its data warehouse target. Many organisations prefer Informatica to do that ETL process, because Informatica is more powerful in designing and building data warehouses. It can connect to several sources and targets to extract meta data from sources and targets, transform and load the data into target systems.

Guidelines to work with Informatica Power Center

Repository: This is where all the metadata information is stored in the Informatica suite. The Power Center Client and the Repository Server would access this repository to retrieve, store and manage metadata.

Power Center Client: Informatica client is used for managing users, identifiying source and target systems definitions, creating mapping and mapplets, creating sessions and run workflows etc.

Repository Server: This repository server takes care of all the connections between the repository and the Power Center Client.

Power Center Server: Power Center server does the extraction from source and then loading data into targets.

Designer: Source Analyzer, Mapping Designer and Warehouse Designer are tools reside within the Designer wizard. Source Analyzer is used for extracting metadata from source systems. Mapping Designer is used to create mapping between sources and targets. Mapping is a pictorial representation about the flow of data from source to target. Warehouse Designer is used for extracting metadata from target systems or metadata can be created in the Designer itself.

Data Cleansing: The PowerCenter's data cleansing technology improves data quality by validating, correctly naming and standardization of address data. A person's address may not be same in all source systems because of typos and postal code, city name may not match with address. These errors can be corrected by using data cleansing process and standardized data can be loaded in target systems (data warehouse).

Transformation: Transformations help to transform the source data according to the requirements of target system. Sorting, Filtering, Aggregation, Joining are some of the examples of transformation. Transformations ensure the quality of the data being loaded into target and this is done during the mapping process from source to target.

Workflow Manager: Workflow helps to load the data from source to target in a sequential manner. For example, if the fact tables are loaded before the lookup tables, then the target system will pop up an error message since the fact table is violating the foreign key validation. To avoid this, workflows can be created to ensure the correct flow of data from source to target.

Workflow Monitor: This monitor is helpful in monitoring and tracking the workflows created in each Power Center Server.

Power Center Connect: This component helps to extract data and metadata from ERP systems like IBM's MQSeries, Peoplesoft, SAP, Siebel etc. and other third party applications.

Power Center Exchange: This component helps to extract data and metadata from ERP systems like IBM's MQSeries, Peoplesoft, SAP, Siebel etc. and other third party applications.

Joiner Transformation

Joiner Transformation is an Active and Connected transformation. This can be used to join two sources coming from two different locations or from same location. For example, to join a flat file and a relational source or to join two flat files or to join a relational source and a XML source. In order to join two sources, there must be atleast one matching port. at least one matching port. While joining two sources it is a must to specify one source as master and the other as detail.

The Joiner transformation supports the following types of joins:

1)Normal 2)Master Outer 3)Detail Outer

4)Full Outer

Normal join discards all the rows of data from the master and detail source that do not match, based on the condition.

Master outer join discards all the unmatched rows from the master source and keeps all the rows from the detail source and the matching rows from the master source.

Detail outer join keeps all rows of data from the master source and the matching rows from the detail source. It discards the unmatched rows from the detail source.

Full outer join keeps all rows of data from both the master and detail sources.

Lookup transformation is Passive and it can be both Connected and UnConnected as well. It is used to look up data in a relational table, view, or synonym. Lookup definition can be imported either from source or from target tables. For example, if we want to retrieve all the sales of a product with an ID 10 and assume that the sales data resides in another table. Here instead of using the sales table as one more source, use Lookup transformation to lookup the data for the product, with ID 10 in sales table.

Connected lookup receives input values directly from mapping pipeline whereas UnConnected lookup receives values from: LKP expression from another transformation.

Connected lookup returns multiple columns from the same row whereas UnConnected lookup has one return port and returns one column from each row.

Connected lookup supports user-defined default values whereas UnConnected lookup does not support user defined values Normalizer Transformation

Normalizer Transformation is an Active and Connected transformation.

It is used mainly with COBOL sources where most of the time data is stored in de-normalized format. Also, Normalizer transformation can be used to create multiple rows from a single row of data.

Processing of incremental aggregation

The first time u run an incremental aggregation session the power center server process the entire source.At the end of the session the power center server stores aggregate data from the session runs in two files, the index file and the data file .The power center server creates the files in a local directory.

Rank Transformation Rank transformation is an Active and Connected transformation. It is used to select the top or bottom rank of data. For example, To select top 10 Regions where the sales volume was very high or To select 10 lowest priced products.

Router Transformation Router is an Active and Connected transformation. It is similar to filter transformation. The only difference is, filter transformation drops the data that do not meet the condition whereas router has an option to capture the data that do not meet the condition. It is useful to test multiple conditions. It has input, output and default groups. For example, if we want to filter data like where State=Michigan, State=California, State=New York and all other States. Its easy to route data to different tables.

Sequence Generator Transformation Sequence Generator transformation is a Passive and Connected transformation. It is used to create unique primary key values or cycle through a sequential range of numbers or to replace missing keys.

It has two output ports to connect transformations. By default it has two fields CURRVAL and NEXTVAL(You cannot add ports to this transformation).

NEXTVAL port generates a sequence of numbers by connecting it to a transformation or target. CURRVAL is the NEXTVAL value plus one or NEXTVAL plus the Increment By value.

Sorter Transformation Sorter transformation is a Connected and an Active transformation. It allows to sort data either in ascending or descending order according to a specified field. Also used to configure for case-sensitive sorting, and specify whether the output rows should be distinct.

Source Qualifier Transformation Source Qualifier transformation is an Active and Connected transformation. When adding a relational or a flat file source definition to a mapping, it is must to connect it to a Source Qualifier transformation.

The Source Qualifier performs the various tasks such as Overriding Default SQL query, Filtering records; join data from two or more tables etc.

Stored Procedure Transformation Stored Procedure transformation is a Passive and Connected & UnConnected transformation. It is useful to automate time-consuming tasks and it is also used in error handling, to drop and recreate indexes and to determine the space in database, a specialized calculation etc.

The stored procedure must exist in the database before creating a Stored Procedure transformation,

and the stored procedure can exist in a source, target, or any database with a valid connection to the Informatica Server. Stored Procedure is an executable script with SQL statements and control statements, user-defined variables and conditional statements.

nformatica - Transformations

In Informatica, Transformations help to transform the source data according to the requirements of target system and it ensures the quality of the data being loaded into target. Transformations are of two types: Active and Passive.

Active Transformation

An active transformation can change the number of rows that pass through it from source to target i.e it eliminates rows that do not meet the condition in transformation.

Passive Transformation

A passive transformation does not change the number of rows that pass through it i.e it passes all rows through the transformation.

Transformations can be Connected or UnConnected.

Connected Transformation

Connected transformation is connected to other transformations or directly to target table in the mapping.

UnConnected Transformation

An unconnected transformation is not connected to other transformations in the mapping. It is called within another transformation, and returns a value to that transformation.

Following are the list of Transformations available in Informatica:

Aggregator Transformation

Expression Transformation

Filter Transformation

Joiner Transformation

Lookup Transformation

Normalizer Transformation

Rank Transformation

Router Transformation

Sequence Generator Transformation

Stored Procedure Transformation

Sorter Transformation

Update Strategy Transformation

XML Source Qualifier Transformation

10

Advanced External Procedure Transformation

External Transformation

In the following pages, we will explain all the above Informatica Transformations and their significances in the ETL process in detail.

Update Strategy Transformation Update strategy transformation is an Active and Connected transformation. It is used to update data in target table, either to maintain history of data or recent changes. You can specify how to treat source rows in table, insert, update, delete or data driven.

XML Source Qualifier Transformation XML Source Qualifier is a Passive and Connected transformation. XML Source Qualifier is used only with an XML source definition. It represents the data elements that the Informatica Server reads when it executes a session with XML sources.

what is transformation? Transformation is repository object that generates modifies or passes data. what are the type of transformations? 2 types: 1) active 2) passive.

11

Explain active and passive transformation?

Active transformation can change the number of rows that pass through it.No of output rows less than or equal to no of input rows. Passive transformation does not change the number of rows.Always no of output rows equal to no of input rows.

Explain bulk loading?

You can use bulk loading to improve performance of a session that inserts a large amount of data to a db2,sysbase,oracle or MS SQL server database. When bulk loading the power center server by passes the database log,which speeds performance. With out writing to the database log, however the target database cant perform rollback. As a result you may not be perform recovery.

What is a constraint based loading?

When you select this option the power center server orders the target load on a row-by-row basis only. Edit tasks->properties->select treat source rows as insert. Edit tasks->config object tab->select constraint based If session is configured constraint absed loading when target table receive rows from different sources.The power center server revert the normal loading for those tables but loads all other targets in the session using constraint based loading when possible loading the primary key table first then the foreign key table. Use the constraint based loading only when the session option treat rows as set to insert. Constraint based load ordering functionality which allows developers to read the source once and populate parent and child tables in a single process.

12

Difference filter and router transformation. Filter transformation to filter the data only one condition and drop the rows dont meet the condition. Drop rows does not store any ware like session log file.. Router transformation to filter the data based on multiple conditions and give yiou the option to route rows that dont match to a default group.

Explain incremental aggregation? When using incremental aggregation you apply captured changes in the source to aggregate calculations in a session.If the source changes only incrementally and you can capture changes you can configure the session to process only those changes. This allows the power center server to update your target incrementally rather than forcing it to process the entire source and recalculate the same data each time you run the session. You can capture new source data.use incremental aggregation when you can capture new source data much time you run the session.Use a stored procedure on filter transformation only new data. Incremental changes do not significantly change the target.Use incremental aggregation when the changes do not significantly change the target.If processing the incrementally changed source alters more than half the existing target, the session may not benefit from using incremental aggregation. In this case drop the table and recreate the target with complete source data.

A data warehouse is a subject-oriented, integrated, time-variant and non-volatile collection of data in support of management's decision making process. Subject-Oriented: A data warehouse can be used to analyze a particular subject area. For example, "sales" can be a particular subject. Integrated: A data warehouse integrates data from multiple data sources. For example, source A and source B may have different ways of identifying a product, but in a data warehouse, there will be only a single way of identifying a product. Time-Variant: Historical data is kept in a data warehouse. For example, one can retrieve data from 3 months, 6 months, 12 months, or even older data from a data warehouse. This contrasts with a transactions system, where often only the most recent data is kept. For example, a transaction system may hold the most recent address of a customer, where a data warehouse can hold all addresses associated with a customer.

13

Non-volatile: Once data is in the data warehouse, it will not change. So, historical data in a data warehouse should never be altered. Ralph Kimball provided a more concise definition of a data warehouse: A data warehouse is a copy of transaction data specifically structured for query and analysis. This is a functional view of a data warehouse. Kimball did not address how the data warehouse is built like Inmon did, rather he focused on the functionality of a data warehouse.
Active Transformation An Active transformation can change teh number of rows that pass through it from source to traget. It eliminates rows that do not meet the condition in transformation. Passive Transformation -A Passive transformation does not change teh number of rows that pass through it i.e., it passes all rows through the transformation. List of transformations coming under Active transformations are -

Source Qualifier Transformation Aggregator Transformation Filter Transformation Rank Transformation Joiner Transformation Router Transformation Normalizer Transformation Update strategy Transformation Sorter Transformation ERP Source Qualifier Transformation Advanced External Procedure Transformation

And here find the Passive Transformations list -

Expression Transformation Sequence Generatoe Transformation LookUP Transformation Stored Procedure Transformation XML Source Qualifier Transformation External procedure Transformation Input Transformation(Mapplet) Output Transformation(Mapplet)

14