Installing Informatica and Using Informatica Administration Console

As we initiate the installation of Informatica PowerCenter 9.5.1, we will need to understand the prerequisites. Informatica PowerCenter is a product that interferes with your filesystem, your database, and so on. So, before we start the installation, we will need to check the machine requirements and components.

The Informatica architecture

PowerCenter has a service-oriented architecture that provides the ability to scale services and share resources across multiple machines. High availability functionality helps minimize service downtime due to unexpected failures or scheduled maintenance in the PowerCenter environment. To understand the architecture of Informatica PowerCenter, we will discuss various components that form the Informatica architecture.

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The Informatica architecture is divided into two sections: server and client.

The server setup can be done on Windows or UNIX operating systems, while the client installation can only be done on Windows operating system. As a best practice, we should always install the server first and then the client.

The server is the basic administrative unit of Informatica, where we configure all the services, create users, and assign authentication. The client is the graphical interface provided to the users. The client includes Designer, Workflow Manager, Workflow Monitor, and Repository Manager.

The components of Informatica PowerCenter are explored in the following sections.

Domain

The domain is the first thing that gets created when you start the installation process. The following points describe a domain:

• It is a fundamental and primary administrative unit in PowerCenter.
• The domain is the first component that we install in Informatica. There will be only a single domain for each license that you purchase.
• Usually, the domain is installed over a common server, which is accessed by software-sharing software, such as Citrix. 
• Domain configuration requires database connectivity. We will be using Oracle Database and a SYSTEM user for domain configuration.Learn more info informatica course online
• When you purchase the software, you install the server over a common server, which becomes your domain, and can be accessed via the client from multiple machines. The server is not installed on the personal system, which gives it the flexibility to share resources across multiple machines. The domain takes the name of the common server computer.

Node

After the domain configuration, the node gets configured. The following points describe a node:

• It is a representation of a server running the PowerCenter Server software.
• It is a logical representation of a machine in a domain.
• The node takes the name of your machine.
• Only one node is possible per license.
• One node in the domain acts as a gateway to receive service requests from clients and route them to the appropriate service and node.
• Services and processes run on nodes in a domain.
• Later in the book, we will see that since we are installing server and client both on the same machine, domain and node will have the same name. If we install the server and client on a different machine, they will pick different names.

Informatica services

Informatica services include various services that start the service manager on individual nodes.

The service manager

The service manager is the component that starts and runs the application services on the node in a domain.

Repository

The repository is the component that stores the metadata that is created when you work on client tools. The following points describe a repository:

• It is a centralized database of Informatica PowerCenter, which is used to store metadata.
• The repository is created in the database, which is used for installation purposes. In our case, the repository will be configured in Oracle Database under an HR Oracle user.
• Multiple repositories can be created under a domain with each repository representing a single environment. For example, the REPO_DEV repository represents the development environment, REPO_TEST represents the test environment, and REPO_PROD represents the production environment.

Repository services

In repository services, each service manages only one repository. All the communication with the repository (for example, from the designer or when running workflows) is managed by the repository service.

Integration Services

An Integration Service provides the connection required for the data flow. Integration Services have the following uses:

• It manages the running of workflows and sessions on the client screen.
• It provides the services required for the flow of data from source to target through Informatica.
• Integration Services enables the extraction of data from the source, transformations in Informatica, and loading into the target. It makes the path for data flow from source to target. I hope you reach a conclusion about Data Warehousing in Informatica. You can learn more about Informatica from online Informatica training
• One Integration Service is sufficient to handle different types of sources and targets.

The following diagram shows the Informatica architecture: