Informatica Session Properties : General Tab

Below are some of the session properties listed under General tab

Rename to define the session name

Enable option 'Fail parent if this task fails' if you want to fail the parent task also
in case this session fails. For example:First session is to load data for Employee table and
second session is to load for Department table. Employee session is Parent and
Department session is Child (Sequential Link), if Department session fails to load data
then we should fail Employee session also since an Employee without Department is not
possible.
Enable the option 'Disable this task', if you want to run the Workflow but don't
want to run this session.
'Treat the input link as: AND / OR', if there are multiple links to the sessions, in such
case we need to decide how the session success is defined: When all the links are success
(AND) or any of the link is success (OR).

Informatica Session:Properties Tab

Below are the properties defined under "Informatica Session Properties tab".

Enter session log file name (any name)

Define session log file directory using $PMSessionLogDir system variable OR

define the complete folder path(/runbatch/session/test_session.log).

Enter parameter file name with complete

path(/runbatch/home/cfg/test_param.txt). Parameter file is used to provide values for
System Parameters and/or User Parameters. Structure of this file is defined in very
specific format.
Note: Parameters are created and used within Mapping Program using Designer Tool
but values to them are provided via Parameter File. For each session we can have
separate Parameter File or single Parameter File can be used for all sessions.

Treat source rows as: Insert, Delete, Update or Data Driven.

This option decides how the source records are treated for the target table. This option
overrides record flag set by the Update Strategy Transformation in the mapping
program."To treat the records with the same flag as they are passed by the
Mapping, use 'Data Driven' option."

Informatica Session Components Tab: Presession and Post-session Command

Pre-Session Command:
We can define Operating System Commands or programs to be executed before the
data loading process (Session Process) starts. Operating System commands or
programs can be defined as Reusable Commands (defined in the form of Command
Tasks) or Non-reusable commands (defined with this property directly). Some of the
uses of commands or programs can be:

To enable/disable database users before data loading

Make backup/copy of target tables so that old data can be restored in case of
data loading fails

To intimate users via Emails about the Data Loading success so that they can
start analysis
Note: With this features Informatica provides free hand for any thing to perform before
data loading.

Post-Session Command:
Post-session Success Command: Same as pre-session but these commands are
executed after the Session is completed successfully.
Post-session Failure Command: Same as pre-session but these commands are
executed after the Session is terminated because of some problem.

On Success Email:
We can send Emails using built-in feature of Informatica if Session is successful, if
Email servers are configured.
On Failure Email:
We can send Emails using built-in feature of Informatica if Session is not successful, if
Email Servers are configured.
Note: Emails can be defined in 'Reusable' or 'Non-reusable' modes.

Informatica Session: Sources and Targets

Properties and Connection

Source Connection
Define source data connection for each source qualifiers. If the base tables for source
qualifiers are from different databases then we should define any of the databases as
connection database for all source qualifiers. We need to grant SELECT privilege on all
the tables from different databases to the Connection Database. This task is done at
Database level.
Target Connection
Select Relational Writer if the target is a Table else select File Writer if the target is a
Text File i.e. Flat File .If File Writer is selected then use 'Set file properties' button to
define file structure like: Delimiter, Text Qualifier, etc and to give extra character
instead of nulls in flat files.

Properties Page
If Relational Writer is selected then set the following properties:
Target load type: Normal or Bulk

Insert, if this option is Unchecked then target table can not receive New
Records.

Delete, if this option is Unchecked then target table does not allow deletion of
records.

Update as Update or Update as Insert or Update else Insert

Any one of them can be checked.
In first case records from source table with Update flag are searched into Target
table, if found, they are updated else rejected (Update as Update).

In second case records from source with Update flag are inserted into target
table (Update as Insert).

In third case records from source table with Update flag are searched into
Target table, if found, they are updated they are Inserted (Update else Insert).

Truncate target table, if this option is checked then all the records from target table
is deleted before data loading.
Reject file name and Folder path
If some of the records are rejected during the data loading process because of Data
Type or Size mismatch then such records are written to a file referred as 'Bad File'. We
need to define a name for such file and folder path using $PMBadFileDir variable or
we have to give the complete folder path.
Connections Page:
Define Target database connection for each target table.
Source Filter:
For Source Qualifier Transformation we can use this property to define Filter condition
to retrieve selected records instead of all records. Using this property we can define
parallel Data Loading even on single Source Table.