Informatica PowerCenter Quiz

Source Analyzer in Informatica PowerCenter is the dedicated tool for importing and defining source file metadata. It's where you import source definitions to understand data structures.

Informatica Designer provides multiple viewing options for objects: Iconized View for compact representation, Normal View for standard display, and Edit Mode for detailed editing. All these views are available.

A mapping in Informatica contains source definitions (where data comes from), target definitions (where data goes), and transformations (business logic for data manipulation). Sessions are separate workflow tasks, not mapping components.

Update transformation is reusuable (can be called multiple times), active (participates in data flow and performs operations), and connected (has input/output ports and connects to other transformations). These are its defining characteristics.

Update Strategy can be set at the Mapping level (within the transformation itself) to flag rows for insert/update/delete, and at the Session level to configure how those flagged rows are processed. Workflow level doesn't have this setting.

In PowerCenter Update Strategy, DD_INSERT has the numeric value 4. Other constants include DD_UPDATE (1), DD_DELETE (2), and DD_REJECT (3). The value 4 is used when flagging rows for insertion.

When you use an Update Strategy transformation, the session property 'Treat source rows as' automatically changes from its default (usually 'Insert') to 'Data Driven', which means the Integration Service follows the update strategy flags set by the transformation.

When 'Forward Reject Rows' is unchecked in the Update Strategy transformation, the Integration Service drops rejected rows and writes them to the Session Log File, not a separate reject file. This is the default behavior for handling rows marked for reject.

Target Update Override is specifically used when updates need to be based on non-key column values. By default, updates use primary key columns to match rows, but this feature allows matching using other columns (non-key values) instead.

Update logic can be implemented using Custom Transformations (user-coded logic for updates) as well as SQL Transformations (using SQL UPDATE statements). Both provide alternatives to the built-in Update Strategy transformation for achieving the same result.

Verbose Data is the tracing level that logs each row passing through a transformation. Verbose Initialization only logs initialization data, Terse logs minimal information, and Normal logs standard execution details without row-level data.

For finer control over update strategy, it should be set at the Mapping Level rather than Session Level. Mapping Level configuration allows row-by-row control via Update Strategy transformation, while Session Level applies to the entire session.