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:
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.
Enroll now in this Informatica certification training to learn about its basic concepts.
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.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why should I learn Informatica?
Informatica is a universally adopted extraction, transformation, and loading (ETL) tool for building enterprise data warehouses. Components in Informatica PowerCenter help extract data from its source, transform it into business requirements, and load it into the target repository.
Learning Informatica will help you become proficient in various ETL products, data masking, data quality, data replication, data virtualization, and data management, and more.
What is ETL?
Learning Informatica will help you understand ETL, which refers to extract, transform, load for merging data from multiple sources. Extraction is the process of reading data from a database. The transformation is done by using rules or lookup tables or by combining data with other data. When loading, data is written to the target database
Is learning Informatica easy?
Yes, learning Informatica is quite easy. This Informatica tutorial will help you understand Informatica, its logic, and implementation using a variety of available data transformations.
How Informatica is the best ETL tool?
Informatica is an advanced data integration solution best suited for large companies because it is database-neutral and therefore can communicate with any database. Moreover, Informatica has a higher success rate than any other ETL tool. The ease of learning Informatica, as well as the ability to connect to various sources and data types make it a favorite of ETL developers.
Is Informatica a good career choice?
Yes. Due to a large amount of data, complex structures and many erroneous data leading to unnecessary costs for enterprises, an integrated platform for efficient data management has become an urgent need. Learning Informatica provides an excellent solution to these data problems and will help you land a promising job.
What skills do I need for Informatica Developer?
This Informatica tutorial provides valuable insight into the Informatica architecture, Datamart, business components, and transformations. To learn Informatica and become a successful Informatica developer, you need to be familiar with ETL tools, SQL, scripting languages, parameterization and debugging.
How much do ETL developers earn?
The average salary of a Junior ETL Developer is $73,866/annum. The average national wage ETL developers in India is around INR 527,905 INR 8,62,410 (as per Indeed).
In what real-time scenario can I use Informatica?
Through this Informatica tutorial, you can learn about the use of Informatica PowerCenter, which is primarily used for data integration. Learning Informatica will provide you the ability to connect and retrieve data from heterogeneous sources and process data. For example, you can connect to a SQL Server database and integrate the data into a third system.