Learn with data management what a REST Web Service is, how to create a Power Center workflow & use REST based method via HTTP Transformation

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How to use Informatica Power Center as a RESTful Web Service Client?
By SatishKumar | July 2 3, 2 019
Introduction
In today’s world DATA is ubiquitous and critical to the business which eventually increases the
need for integration across different platforms like Cloud, Web Service Provider etc. When it
comes to Data Integration, business needs effective communication between their software
systems and ETL tool to fulfill their needs.
This blog post explains what a REST Web Service is, how you can create a Power Center
workflow, use REST based method to access the web services via HTTP Transformation.
REST Overview
Web Service provides a common platform that allows two different applications on various
platforms to communicate and exchange messages between them over HTTP protocol. Web
Services can be accessed using different methods or styles. In Web Service world
REpresentational State Transfer(REST) is a stateless client-server architecture in which Web
Services are exposed as URLs. The typical method of accessing Web resource in a RESTful
system is through various HTTP methods such as GET, POST, PUT and DELETE.
REST can use SOAP Web Services and any protocol such as HTTP, SOAP.
High-Level REST Architecture
FIGURE 1: HIGH-LEVEL REST ARCHITECTURE
REST call using Informatica Power Center
Let us explain with the help of a sample web service which is used in a Retail Industry. In a
Retail industry, customer can purchase various items from the retailer through online and offline
and we need a centralized repository called a Data Warehouse where all the transactional data is
fed into. The item details are then further normalized into Data Marts to form a common schema
which will have facts and dimensions. On a large scale environment, this could be a cumbersome
task in designing a data model.
To overcome this we have business needs to access the data over the network and the best way
will be to use the web service. So the final order details, pricing, payment details, and shipping
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2. information are translated internally and saved in a third party system which is either in an XML
or JSON format. The third-party system hosted over a secured network is accessed via a URL.
Since this system is based on REST API calls, we use Informatica Power Center as a client to
access the server which is a web service API. Informatica Data Quality (IDQ) can also be integrated
separately with the Power Center and Informatica MDM to strengthen enterprise data quality.
In Power Center, you can use an HTTP transformation to send a request and receive a response
from a REST Web service.
Success Story
5.5% revenue uplift for an Insurance Provider
with a Customer-360 view
Learn More Success Story
Pre-requisites to configure REST call using HTTP Transformation
Valid REST based URL supporting either XML or JSON
Valid SSL certificates to connect to REST URL outside of the network
Basic Authentication Mechanism(User Name and Password)
Step by Step Process
Creating a Source File
Create a source file which specifies the search parameters to be passed as input to the HTTP
transformation.
FIGURE 2: SOURCE FILE
Create HTTP Transformation
Create HTTP transformation with the following input ports:
Username
Password
OrderNumber
FIGURE 3: HTTP TRANSFORMATION
Base URL
Set the Base URL to get the Order details based on the input parameters passed from the
source file.
Base URL: https://test-swaggerUI/orders/search
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3. FIGURE 4: BASE URL SETTINGS
Set the HTTP Header parameters
Header parameters in HTTP transformation contain header data for request and response in a
specified format such as XML or JSON. Following are the parameters:
Default Value: Specify the acceptable values supported by the web service. By default, the
response will be in JSON. If you need XML you need to specify as ‘text/xml’
HTTP Name: For REST API the default value is “Accept”
FIGURE 5: HEADER PARAMETER SETTINGS
HTTP Method Selection Type
Specify the type of HTTP method on the URL. In our example we are trying to get the order
detail information, so specify the type as “GET”
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4. FIGURE 6: HTTP METHOD SELECTION TYPE
HTTP Output
Pass the HTTP output to either a flat file or an XML parser to parse the information and load it
into the target table. In this example, we write the output of the HTTP to a flat file.
This is how the final mapping will look like.
Final Mapping
FIGURE 7: FINAL MAPPING
Create a connection in Workflow manager and run the workflow
Navigate to Workflow manager ->Connections-> Applications->HTTP Transformation
FIGURE 8: HTTP APPLICATION TYPE
Name: Enter the name of the HTTP Transformation which is understandable
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5. User Name: Enter the username of the REST API URL call
Password: Enter the password for the URL
Authentication Type: Select the Authentication type as “Basic”
Create a workflow for the mapping and run the workflow. Finally, view the output. In our
example, for the Order Number “ORD-123”
FIGURE 9: FINAL OUTPUT
Issues faced while connecting to HTTP Transformation
While using HTTP Transformation the most common issue is “SSL Certificate Error”. So when
you run the workflow which is using the final URL you will get the below errors in session logs
Root Cause
This error is caused because the connection to the web service URL or Rest API does not
include the certificate data that is needed to authenticate the connection from the certificate
provider’s end. The certificate bundle does not contain a certificate from a Certificate Authority
that the Web service Provider uses.
Resolution
Download the SSL certificates for the URL and add to the certificate files located under
$INFA_HOME/server/bin/ca-bundle.crt
Refer the below KB article to know how to add those certificates
HOW TO: Extract certificates from a HTTPS URL and add to ca-bundle.crt file
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6. Conclusion
This concludes how to create a Power Center Workflow using REST based methods to access a
web service using HTTP Transformation, invoke HTTP commands to get data from the web
service resource.
Satish Kumar
Senior Technical Consultant
He has having around 6 plus years of experience in
development and implementation of ETL and MDM
solutions.
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