With the increased digitization of the economy, a humongous amount of semi-structured and unstructured data is emanating from various sources. Due to this unmatched format of data, the need for data integration to process the data becomes a necessity. Informatica is widely known for its data integration abilities across the globe.
Informatica PowerCenter allows migrating, integrating, and governing the enterprise-wide data, and hence it has attracted many aspirants to build careers in this lucrative domain. Merely getting the training does not lead people to success; a certification has become the need of the hour.
Go through this inquisitive video on Informatica PowerCenter from Intellipaat:
Why do we need certification?
Informatica certification is in high demand in today’s world. There are a lot of real-time requirements in various organizations that make them use Informatica extensively. Adding certifications to your resumes helps you set a standard among the competitors by differentiating yourself and getting recognized in the crowd.
People who have successfully completed the certification are getting amazing benefits and plenty of job opportunities. If you are certified in Informatica, you will be given the highest priority in various projects. About 70–90 percent salary hike is guaranteed for Informatica-certified professionals.
There are four types of Informatica PowerCenter certifications, i.e., PowerCenter Data Integration Certification, Data Quality Certification, Master Data Management Certification, and Informatica Big Data Certification.
Let’s see the structure of these exams:
1. Informatica PowerCenter Data Integration Certification
Informatica PowerCenter is the foundation for all activities in data integration. These certifications can be earned as per your expertise in data governance, data migration, and data warehousing projects at two levels. They are explained below.
- PowerCenter Data Integration 10: Administrator, Specialist Certification
This test measures your competency across installation and configuration, architecture, server maintenance, security, deployment, PowerCenter Repository Management, web services, command-line utilities, and Informatica Velocity best practices and implementation methodology, as a full member of a project implementation team.
Time limit: 90 minutes
Total number of questions: 70
Qualifying score: 70%
Certification prerequisites: Before taking up this test, an applicant must make sure that he/she has the skills in Informatica architecture, service maintenance, security, deployment, license keys, repository management, web services, command-line interfaces, metadata reporting, and administrator tool.
- PowerCenter Data Integration 10: Developer, Specialist Certification
This test measures your competency in building PowerCenter objects on basic and advanced levels in order to make the optimal use of the designer, workflow monitor tools. You will also be tested on your abilities to work as a part of data integration development team.
Time limit: 90 minutes
Total number of questions: 70
Qualifying score: 70%
Certification prerequisites: Before taking up this test, the applicant must make sure that he/she has the skills in basic mapping design, optimal mapping design, parameters and variables, expression syntax, troubleshooting, workflows and worklets, and architecture.
2. Data Quality Certification
Informatica data quality products deliver authoritative and common data quality to all projects and applications, stakeholders, and data domains. It doesn’t matter whether your application is on-premises or in the cloud. There are three levels:
- Data Quality 10: Administrator, Specialist Certification
This test measures your competency as a full member of the project implementation team, including your ability to install, configure, and administer Informatica Data Quality (IDQ), product (client, server, and services), setup IDQ domain security (users, groups, and privileges on IDQ services), IDQ connections, prebuilt content (accelerators, address data, and identify populations), upgrade, monitoring, and reporting.
Time limit: 90 minutes
Total number of questions: 70
Qualifying score: 70%
Certification prerequisites: Before taking up this test, the applicant must make sure that he/she has the skills in address validation, connections, data director and workflows, domain management, users and architecture, DQ content, DQ matching, DQ services, installation and upgrade, monitoring and log, operations, reporting, security, and users and architecture.
- Data Quality 10: Developer, Specialist Certification
This test measures your competency as a member of a project implementation team. This involves an in-depth knowledge of data quality processes such as profiling, standardizing, matching, and consolidation. You must select and configure the appropriate data quality transformations and build, debug, and execute data quality mappings including integrating those mappings into PowerCenter if needed.
Time limit: 90 minutes
Total number of questions: 70
Qualifying score: 70%
Certification prerequisites: Before taking up this test, the applicant must make sure that he/she has the skills in Informatica Overview, analyst collaboration, profiling, standardization/mapplets, address validation, matching, consolidation and the DQA, integration with PowerCenter, object import and export, and DQ for Excel and parameters.
- Axon Data Governance, Specialist Certification
This test measures your ability to utilize Informatica products in support of data governance. Measure your skills in ensuring high levels of data quality, integrity, availability, trustworthiness, and data security. Test your knowledge and ability to leverage the Informatica platform for execution and maintenance of enterprise data governance.
Time limit: 90 minutes
Total number of questions: 70
Qualifying score: 70%
Certification prerequisites: Before taking up this test, the applicant must make sure that he/she has the following skills.
Axon for Business Users: This is an introduction to data governance and Informatica Axon, Navigation Informatica Axon, population axon, axon glossary, interface and lineage, insight and local maps, policy, process, workflows and change requests, and projects and data quality.
Axon Installation and Configuration: Axon architecture, axon integration overview, axon prevalidation and installation, axon integration with data quality, axon integration with EIC, axon integration with Secure@Source, maintain axon, advanced end-user training, axon admin panel and backup, and restore axons PostgreSQL database.
3. Master Data Management Certification
Master Data Management (MDM) increases operations and decisions with reliable and concentrated data. It determines your ability to deploy MDM via two levels of certification exams.
- Master Data Management: Administrator, Specialist Certification
This test measures your competency as a member of a Master Data Management Administration team. The skills and capabilities tested are installation and upgrade (both test and user environments), performance tuning, where to find information, troubleshooting, batch processes, managing metadata, upgrade process, and security.
Time limit: 90 minutes
Total number of questions: 70
Qualifying score: 70%
Certification prerequisites: Before taking up this test, the applicant must make sure that he/she has the skills in Hub Console, key concepts, and Master Data Management Hub Administration.
- MDM Multidomain 10: Developer, Specialist Certification
This test is applicable to software version 10.1. This test measures your competency as a member of a project implementation team. You should be able to explain and identify the MDM product architecture and to configure its main components including the cleanse engine, match server, data governance tools, and workflows.
Time limit: 90 minutes
Total number of questions: 70
Qualifying score: 70%
Certification prerequisites: Before taking up this test, the applicant must make sure that he/she has the skills in architecture, base objects, data flow processes, data management, data governance, match and merge, and tools and workbench.
4. Informatica Big Data Certification
Informatica Big Data Management is a solution that is designed to integrate, access, govern, clear, master, and secure big data. It allows access to all types of data using high-performance connectivity and dynamic mappings.
- Big Data Management 10.1, Specialist Certification
This test measures your competency in utilizing PowerCenter mappings and workflows at basic and advanced levels in order to perform data integration on big data. It will test your ability to integrate PowerCenter with Hadoop clusters and the related Hadoop ecosystem.
Time limit: 90 minutes
Total number of questions: 70
Qualifying score: 70%
Certification prerequisites: Before taking up this test, the applicant must make sure that he/she has the skills in Big Data basics, data warehouse offloading, data ingestion, Big Data management architecture, creating mappings and polyglot computing, monitoring and troubleshooting, mapping challenges and performance tuning, data quality, complex files, NoSQL database, developer fundamentals, creating physical data objects, viewing data, parameters, parameter files and parameter sets, and workflows and applications.
In this section, let us understand some of the examination details which gives us a roadmap to prepare for the certification test. We will basically know the time limit, qualifying score, skills required, test domains, and the estimated percentage coverage.
| Informatica PowerCenter Certification | Description |
| Informatica PowerCenter Developer Certification | Tests the ability to build PowerCenter objects, use transformations, handling workflows, etc. |
| Informatica PowerCenter Administrator Certification | Tests administering abilities such as installing, configuring, deployment, handling web services, etc. |
Let’s take a look at these two certifications in detail.
This test consists of 70 questions of multiple-choice, multiple-response, and true/false statements patterns. The below table explains the test domains and the estimated percentage coverage of each domain in the exam:
| Description | Estimated Percentage Coverage |
| Basic Mapping Design | 45% |
| Optimal Mapping Design | 20% |
| Expressions | 10% |
| Parameters/Variables | 5% |
| Workflows and Worklets | 10% |
| Troubleshooting | 5% |
| Architecture and Administration | 5% |
Time limit: 90 minutes
Qualifying score: 70%
Skill-set required: The skill set required to qualify the Informatica Developer Certification Test is as described below:
Basic Mapping Design: 45%
About half of the questions will be based on this concept wherein the candidates will be tested to see whether they have expertise in PowerCenter Designer tool, workflow manager tool, workflow monitor tool, qualifier transformation, user-defined functions, etc.
Optimal Mapping Design: 20%
This portion consists of questions revolving around SQL overrides and transformations such as Lookup, XML, HTTP, Active, Stored procedure, Normalizer, etc.
Parameters/Variables and Expressions: 10% and 5%
The first part of parameters and variables make 5 percent of the test while the second part of the expressions makes 10 percent of the certification test. Questions from these portions are based on variable assignment, parameter files, Informatica transformation functions, etc.
Troubleshooting, Workflows and Worklets, Architecture and Administration: 5%, 10%, and 5%
These three portions of PowerCenter cumulatively form 20 percent of the entire test. In order to achieve a good score, the candidate must have a sound knowledge of Informatica workflow monitor, log management, worklets, architecture and commands, etc.
This test consists of 70 questions based on different concepts of PowerCenter. The pattern of questions can be a mixture of multiple-choice, multiple-response, and true/false statements patterns. The below table shows the test domains and the estimated percentage coverage of each domain in the exam:
| Description | Estimated Percentage Coverage |
| Security | 20% |
| Informatica Architecture | 15% |
| Service Maintenance | 15% |
| Deployment | 15% |
| Command-line Interface | 10% |
| License keys | 5% |
| Administration Tool | 5% |
| Metadata Reporting | 3% |
| Web Services | 2% |
Time limit: 90 minutes
Qualifying score: 70%
Skill-set: In order to score high grades in this exam, a candidate needs to have the following skills:
Informatica Architecture: 15%
This module forms a considerable part of this exam. The candidate should be well-acquainted with the services, functions, nodes, client applications, domain migration, etc.
Service Maintenance: 15%
Questions from this part will be based on functions of services, client applications, configuring services, etc.
Security: 20%
For any system, security is one of the primary concerns that an administrator needs to deal with. This certification test includes questions based on user groups, privilege, permissions, configuration, assigning roles, setting up permissions in a domain, authentication, etc.
Deployment: 15%
The candidate is expected to have in-depth knowledge in metadata deployment, deployment methods, etc.
License Keys: 5%
Though it is a small portion of the entire PowerCenter, it forms a small portion of the exam. It consists of the questions based on license key files, assigning services, license repository management, shortcuts, folder permissions, etc.
Web Services and Command-line Interface: 2% and 10%
This portion of the certification tests the candidate’s ability to configure real-time web, WSDL, web service architecture, functions of CLI, CLI return code, etc.
Metadata Reporting and Administration Tool: 3% and 5%
This portion requires the candidate to have sound knowledge in MX views, creating and managing metadata extensions, configuration, connections, etc.
Learn about various business Components in Informatica such as Power connect, mart, exchange, analysis and more with this Informatica tutorial.
Forrester claims Informatica PowerCenter to be the most preferred ETL technology which clearly proves its importance across industries. More and more companies are inclining toward effective ETL tools to help synchronize the enterprise-wide data. Informatica is known for its effective data integration and data quality features that let enterprises deal with multiple processes simultaneously. Clearly, getting Informatica PowerCenter certified will be the wisest decision if you are planning to take your career in this direction.