Informatica Tutorial - A Complete Guide for Beginners

Informatica PowerCenter has been a leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Integration technology for the past ten years. It is also one of the most sought-after skills in today’s IT market, as it is a unique data integration platform that interoperates over broad ranges of various applications and systems. In this Informatica tutorial, you will understand why there is so much buzz around Informatica and most importantly what is Informatica, its architecture, and Informatica installation.

Informatica Tutorial - Table of Contents

• What is Informatica?
• What is ETL?
• Features
• Why Informatica
• Applications
• Informatica Architecture
• PowerCenter Domain
• Installation

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What is Informatica?

Informatica is a company that offers the market’s leading Enterprise Cloud Data Management and Data Integration products. Primarily utilized for retrieving and analyzing data from various data sources to build enterprise data warehouse applications.

Informatica is also known as Informatica PowerCenter. This tool mainly focuses on ETL, data masking, data replication, data quality, data virtualization, and much more. It o7ffers services for various industries, businesses, and government organizations including healthcare, telecommunication, insurance, and financial services. 

The Informatica editions available in the market are:

• Standard edition
• Advanced edition
• Premium edition.

[ Related Article: What is Informatica Power Center?]

To get a deep dive into Informatica, we must have a better understanding of ETL.

What is ETL?

ETL is defined as the process of moving data from its source to the data storage system.

• Extract: It is the first phase of ETL, where the data collected from one or more data sources are held in temporary storage.
• Transform: In this phase, the data is processed in the required format. It includes data formatting, data merging, data cleansing.
• Load: In this phase, the transformed data is moved to the permanent target database.

[ Related Article: Informatica ETL Tools ]

What are the Major Features Supported by Informatica?

The following are the major features supported by Informatica:

• B2B exchange of data and complete end-to-end visibility.
• Universal connectivity
• Automated data validation testing
• Advanced data transformation
• Data warehousing
• Data migration
• Integration Competency Centers (ICC)
• Data replication and synchronization
• Data governance
• Master Data Management (MDM)
• Accurate data for applications and analytics
• Seamlessly connected to the Cloud applications
• Rapid prototyping and profiling.

Why is Informatica the Best Solution?

Informatica is the most widely used data integration tool today. The reasons behind why Informatica is the best solution in enterprises are:

• Informatica can interact with all the primary data sources(Flat files, Mainframe, RDBMS, SAP, XML, VSM, etc.) and transform data between them.
• It can move huge volumes of data.
• It effectively joins data from various data sources.
• Analytics and applications can be fed up with real-time data.
• Improves business agility by providing on-time secure and accurate data.

Real-Time Applications of Informatica?

• Data Migration: PowerCenter supports the migration of data from an existing system to the new system.
• Application Integration: Informatica PowerCenter offers integration of web services, B2B data, and more.
• Data Warehousing: Data Warehouse collects data from many data sources for analysis and this can be performed easily using Informatica.
• Middleware: Informatica supports middleware between two applications like SAP BW, SAP R3, and more.

[ Check out Mapplets in Informatica ]

To gain more in-depth knowledge of Informatica in real-time, we should have a clear understanding of Informatica Architecture and its components.

Informatica Architecture

Informatica has a service-oriented architecture. A service-oriented architecture is nothing but two or more services that communicate with each other for data transfer. Informatica PowerCenter follows component-based development methodologies to build data flow from source to target using various components called Informatica transformations.