What is the architecture of PowerCenter?

What is the architecture of PowerCenter?

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.

Informatica ETL product, Known as Power Center. Have 3 main components:

1.       Informatica Integration Services

The Integration Service moves data from sources to targets based on workflow and mapping metadata stored in a repository. When a workflow starts, the Integration Service retrieves mapping, workflow, and session metadata from the repository. It extracts data from the mapping sources and stores the data in memory while it applies the transformation rules configured in the mapping. The Integration Service loads the transformed data into one or more targets.

When you run a workflow, the Integration Service process starts and locks the workflow, runs the workflow tasks, and starts the process to run sessions.

The Integration Service uses the Load Balancer to dispatch tasks. The Load Balancer dispatches tasks to achieve optimal performance. It may dispatch tasks to a single node or across the nodes in a grid.

The Integration Service can achieve high performance using symmetric multi-processing systems. It can start and run multiple tasks concurrently. It can also concurrently process partitions within a single session. When you create multiple partitions within a session, the Integration Service creates multiple database connections to a single source and extracts a separate range of data for each connection. It also transforms and loads the data in parallel.

2.       Informatica PowerCenter repository

All the metadata is stored in repository. Integration services will send request to repository to get the metadata about workflow, session, mapping, source, target etc.

The PowerCenter repository resides in a relational database. The repository stores information required to extract, transform, and load data. It also stores administrative information such as permissions and privileges for users and groups that have access to the repository. PowerCenter applications access the PowerCenter repository through the Repository Service.

3.       Informatica Client Tool.

• Define transformation process, known as mapping. (Designer)
• Define run-time properties for a mapping, known as sessions (Workflow Manager)
• Monitor execution of sessions (Workflow Monitor)
• Manage repository, useful for administrators (Repository Manager)
• Report Metadata (Metadata Reporter)