Informatica Developer:

Tips & Tricks for Mapping Designer

Barry Wildhagen
Professional Services

1
Agenda

• Introduction
• Designer tips & tricks
• Best practices
• Mapping techniques
• Data Stencil Option

2
Introduction

3
About Me

• Barry Wildhagen
• Senior Consultant
• Informatica Professional Services
• Based in The Netherlands

4
About this Presentation

• Increase developer productivity

• More resources available
• http://my.informatica.com
• http://devnet.informatica.com
• Velocity methodology
• Product manuals

• Questions

5
 PowerCenter 8 Architecture

Domain
Sources Integration Targets
Service

Repository
Service
Administration
Repository Console
Service Process

PowerCenter Client

This session Repository

6
PowerCenter 8 Designer

7
Designer Tips & Tricks

8
User Interface

• Welcome screen
• Repository Navigator
• Output Window
• Workspace
• Toolbars
• Workbook
• Context menu’s
• Options and Customization

9
Using Designer

• Port propagation
• Query
• Tools shortcuts
• Autolink
• Copy/paste
• Create target from transformation

10
Best Practices

11
General Best Practices

• Naming conventions
• Use comments in objects
• Avoid implicit data conversion
• Reuse as much as possible
• Only connect what is used
• Utilize single-pass reads

12
Output Filename Port

• Write records to a dynamically named flat file

13
Cache Calculator

• Use the cache calculator for aggregator, joiner,

rank, and sorter transformations

14
Group Expression

• Add expression transformation after a source

qualifier and before a target
• If source or target definition changes,
reconnecting ports is much easier

15
MX Views

• Views in PowerCenter repository

• Based on OPB tables
• Utilized by Repository Reporting (Data Analyzer)
• Contain a lot of valuable information!!

16
Mapping Techniques

17
De-normalizing Data With an Aggregator

Turn multiple rows

Into one row…

YEAR,ACCOUNT,MONTH1,MONTH2,MONTH3, MONTH4, MONTH5, … MONTH12
1997,Salaries,21000,21000,22000,19000,23000,26000,29000,29000,34000,34000..

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 De-normalizing Data with an Aggregator

The First or Last function will denormalize data

19
Multi-record Lookup

• Regular lookup only returns one row

• Use SQL Transformation to get all rows

20
Data Stencil

21
Data Stencil

• Captures best practice DI methodologies as

reusable templates
• Reusable mapping templates defined in Visio
• Automates mapping creation and addresses
productivity
• Allows high level design of mappings
• For DI architects

22
Thank You

23