Introduction
In this Informatica tutorial for beginners, you will learn Informatica from the basics to get a clear idea of how the Informatica ETL tool works. Informatica is a powerful tool that is extensively used for Extract, Transform, Load operations. As part of this Informatica tutorial, you will learn about the Informatica fundamentals, its architecture, Informatica transformations, Informatica PowerCenter, Informatica ETL tool, and more.
Watch this Informatica video:
Here in this tutorial, you will learn:
What is Informatica?
First, let us compare Informatica with another ETL tool Talend in the following table:
Comparison criteria |
Informatica |
Talend |
Nature of tool |
Commercial |
Commercial & open source versions are available |
Working with the tool |
It is user-friendly |
Needs knowledge of Java |
Reusability |
Transformations can be reused |
Reusable components have to be generated |
Options for scheduling, parallelism, backup & recovery |
Available |
Available only in the commercial version |
Informatica is a company that offers powerful data integration products. The Informatica, i.e., Informatica PowerCenter products are used extensively for ETL operations, data quality, data masking, data replication, data virtualization, and master data management services. Informatica works on service-oriented architecture. It is able to promote the services and resources over different machines. Informatica offers transformation features that include filtering, aggregation, joining, and other options on data while moving it from the source systems to the destination system.
Why is Informatica so widely used?
Informatica is the most popular ETL tool used around the world. Whenever we have a data system and we want to do some operations on the backend like cleansing the data, modifying it, and so on based on certain rules then we can use Informatica. Informatica tutorials will give you a clear picture of why Informatica is used widely.
Informatica is the most widely used data integration tool and there are very good for this as listed below:
- Informatica lets you seamlessly collaborate Information Technology and business
- It is extremely easy to use and there are a lot of automated processes as well
- You can deploy Informatica for operations and governance oversight
- Your analytics and applications can be fed with real-time data
- You can do advanced transformations on data while moving from source to destination
- It also offers Master Data Management to link critical data to a common point of reference
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Prepare yourself for the industry by checking out this Top Informatica Interview Questions and Answers!
Features of Informatica
In this Informatica tutorial for beginners, you’ll learn the important features of it. Informatica is an extremely feature-rich tool that lets you do a lot of operations including row-level operations on data, integrating all types of data including structured, unstructured, and semi-structured and it also lets you store metadata which is the data of all the data processes and operations.
Now we list some of the important features of Informatica:
- Repository Service: It maintains the Informatica metadata and offers access to other services
- Integration Service: It lets you move the data from various sources onto the target
- Reporting Service: This is the service that helps you generate the reports
- Informatica Designer: This is used for creating the mapping between the source and the target
- Workflow Manager: This is used for creating the workflow and other tasks along with their execution
- Workflow Monitor: It lets you monitor the execution of the workflows
- Repository Manager: It is used for managing the objects in the repository.
Applications of Informatica
Here in this Informatica tutorial, we’ll discuss some of the top applications of Informatica in an organizational setup:
- Migrating from a legacy system like a mainframe to a new database system needs the data to be moved from the old system to the new system
- If an organization wants to set up its own data warehouse, then it would need an ETL tool to move the data from production onto the new data warehouse
- Informatica can also be used as a data cleansing tool
- Informatica also offers integration of web services, business-to-business data, etc.
Why should you learn Informatica?
Informatica is being extensively used across the world in organizations that want to stay on top of their data. With over 30% of the world’s data still being stored in legacy systems like Mainframe, there is a huge potential for a powerful tool like Informatica when it comes to data integration. Along with that Informatica is your gateway into the world of big data. Thus there are organizations that are offering top-notch salaries for professionals who are well-versed in this top ETL tool. Now, these are some compelling reasons for you to learn Informatica from this Informatica tutorial for beginners and excel in your career.
Recommended Audience
This Informatica ETL tutorial is meant for those who want to learn Informatica and take their careers to the next level. If you are business intelligence, ETL, database, or SQL professional then you can benefit from this Informatica ETL tutorial. Even project managers and fresh graduates can learn Informatica from this tutorial.

Prerequisites
This Informatica tutorial for beginners with examples can be taken by anybody. Having a basic knowledge of SQL can be beneficial.
Learn how to install Informatica Power Center from our blog.