Informatica provides a single enterprise data integration platform to help organizations access, transform, and integrate data from various systems and deliver that information to transactional systems, business processes, and users. It supports activities like data warehousing, migration, consolidation, and metadata management. Informatica uses a server to extract data from sources, transform it using configured mappings, and load it into targets. It includes components like a repository service to manage metadata, integration service to execute workflows, and client tools for designing mappings and monitoring workflows.

1. Informatica provides a single enterprise data integration platform to help organizations access,
transform, and integrate data from a large variety of systems and deliver that information to other
transactional systems, real-time business processes, and users.
Informatica supports the activities of Business Integration Competency Center (ICC) and other
integration experts by serving as the foundation for data warehousing, data migration,
consolidation, “single-view,” metadata management and synchronization.
• Informatica: Key Benefits
With Informatica you can
W Integrate data to provide business users holistic access to enterprise data - data is
comprehensive, accurate, and timely.
c Scale and respond to business needs for information - deliver data in a secure, scalable
environment that provides immediate data access to all disparate sources.
e Simplify design, collaboration, and re-use to reduce developers' time to results - unique
metadata management helps boost efficiency to meet changing market demands.
Informatica: Key Features
I Enterprise-level data integration. Informatica ensures accuracy of data through a single
environment for transforming, profiling, integrating, cleansing, and reconciling data and
managing metadata.
m Security. Informatica ensures security through complete user authentication, granular
privacy management, and secure transport of your data.
p Visual Interface. Informatica is an easy to use tool with a simple visual interface for
designing the integration.
d Developer productivity. Informatica simplifies design processes by making it easy to
search and profile data, reuse objects across teams and projects, and leverage metadata.
s Compatibility. Informatica can communicate with a wide range of data sources and move
huge volume of data between them effectively.
Informatica Architecture and Components
When a workflow starts, the Informatica Server retrieves mapping, workflow, and session
metadata from the repository to extract data from the source, transform it, and load it into the
target. It also runs the tasks in the workflow. The Informatica Server uses Load Manager and Data
Transformation Manager (DTM) processes to run the workflow.
Server Components
S Integration Service. Integration Service manages the scheduling and execution of
workflows. It reads mapping and session information from the repository, extracts data
from the mapping sources and stores the data in memory while it applies the
transformation rules that you configure in the mapping. It loads the transformed data into
the mapping targets. You can achieve high performance using symmetric multi-processing
systems, start and run multiple workflows concurrently and concurrently process partitions
within a single session.
w Repository Service. Repository Service manages the metadata in the repository
database and repository connection requests from client applications. For each repository
database registered with the Repository Server, it configures and manages a Repository
Agent process. It monitors the status of running Repository Agents, and sends repository
object notification messages to client applications. The Repository Agent is a separate,
multi-threaded process that retrieves, inserts, and updates metadata in the repository
database tables. The Repository Agent ensures the consistency of metadata in the
repository by employing object locking.
r Web Services Hub. The Web Services Hub is a gateway that exposes PowerCenter
functionality to external clients. It receives requests from web service clients and passes
them to the Integration Service or Repository Service. The Integration Service or
Repository Service processes the requests and sends a response to the web service
client through the Web Services Hub.
c SAP BW Services. The SAP BW Service listens for RFC requests from SAP BW and
initiates workflows to extract from or load to SAP BW. The SAP BW Service is not highly
available. You can configure it to run on one node.
Client Components
C Repository Server Administration Console. Repository Server Administration Console

2. is used to add, edit, and remove repository configurations. It is also used to export and
import repository configurations, create, promote, copy, delete, backup and restore
repositories.
r Repository Manager. Repository Manager is used for administering the repository,
perform folder functions like create, edit and delete folders. It is also used to copy a folder
within a repository or to other repository, compare folders, and implement repository
security. Also, it allows us to create, edit and delete repository users and user groups,
assign and revoke repository privileges and folder permissions, view locks and un-lock
objects. You can import and export repository connection information in the registry,
analyze source/target, mapping dependencies and view the properties of repository
objects.
o Designer. Designer provides five tools with which you can create mappings. Source
Analyzer is used to import or create source definitions for flat file, ERP, and relational
sources. Warehouse Designer is used to import or create target definitions.
Transformation developer is used to create reusable transformations. Mapplet designer is
used to create mapplets. Mapping designer is used to create mappings.
u Workflow Manager. Workflow Manager is used to create Workflow which is a set of
instructions to execute mappings. Generally, a workflow contains a Session and any other
task you may want to perform when you execute a session Tasks can include a Session,
Email, or Scheduling information. You connect each task with Links in the workflow You
can also create a worklet in the Workflow Manager. A Worklet is an object that groups a
set of tasks.
s Workflow Monitor. Workflow Monitor is used to monitor workflows and tasks. You can
view details about a workflow or task in either Gantt Chart view or Task view. You can run,
stop, abort, and resume workflows. Displays workflows that have run at least once.
Continuously receives information from the Integration Service and Repository Service.
Fetches information from the repository to display historic information.
Informatica Services Connectivity
The Integration Service process connects to the source or target database using ODBC or native
drivers. It connects to the Repository Service to retrieve workflow and mapping metadata from the
repository database. The Informatica Client tools like the Workflow Manager communicates with
the Integration Service and the Repository Service process over a TCP/IP connection.