Informatica Transformations

A transformation is a repository object that generates, modifies, or passes data. The Designer provides a set of
transformations that perform specific functions. For example, an Aggregator transformation performs calculations
on groups of data.

Transformations can be of two types:

Active Transformation

An active transformation can change the number of rows that pass through the transformation, change the
transaction boundary, can change the row type. For example, Filter, Transaction Control and Update Strategy are
active transformations.

The key point is to note that Designer does not allow you to connect multiple active transformations or an active and
a passive transformation to the same downstream transformation or transformation input group because the
Integration Service may not be able to concatenate the rows passed by active transformations However, Sequence
Generator transformation(SGT) is an exception to this rule. A SGT does not receive data. It generates unique
numeric values. As a result, the Integration Service does not encounter problems concatenating rows passed by a
SGT and an active transformation.

Passive Transformation.

A passive transformation does not change the number of rows that pass through it, maintains the transaction
boundary, and maintains the row type.

The key point is to note that Designer allows you to connect multiple transformations to the same downstream
transformation or transformation input group only if all transformations in the upstream branches are passive. The
transformation that originates the branch can be active or passive.

Transformations can be Connected or UnConnected to the data flow.

Connected Transformation
Connected transformation is connected to other transformations or directly to target table in the mapping.

UnConnected Transformation

An unconnected transformation is not connected to other transformations in the mapping. It is called within another
transformation, and returns a value to that transformation.

Informatica Transformations

Following are the list of Transformations available in Informatica:

1. Aggregator Transformation
2. Application Source Qualifier Transformation
3. Custom Transformation
4. Data Masking Transformation
 5. Expression Transformation
6. External Procedure Transformation
7. Filter Transformation
8. HTTP Transformation
9. Input Transformation
10. Java Transformation
11. Joiner Transformation
12. Lookup Transformation
13. Normalizer Transformation
14. Output Transformation
15. Rank Transformation
16. Reusable Transformation
17. Router Transformation
18. Sequence Generator Transformation
19. Sorter Transformation
20. Source Qualifier Transformation
21. SQL Transformation
22. Stored Procedure Transformation
23. Transaction Control Transaction
24. Union Transformation
25. Unstructured Data Transformation
26. Update Strategy Transformation
27. XML Generator Transformation
28. XML Parser Transformation
29. XML Source Qualifier Transformation
30. Advanced External Procedure Transformation
31. External Transformation

In the following pages, we will explain all the above Informatica Transformations and their significances in the ETL
process in detail.

Informatica Transformations

Aggregator Transformation

Aggregator transformation performs aggregate funtions like average, sum, count etc. on multiple rows or groups.
The Integration Service performs these calculations as it reads and stores data group and row data in an aggregate
cache. It is an Active & Connected transformation.

Difference b/w Aggregator and Expression Transformation? Expression transformation permits you to perform
calculations row by row basis only. In Aggregator you can perform calculations on groups.

Aggregator transformation has following ports State, State_Count, Previous_State and State_Counter.

Components: Aggregate Cache, Aggregate Expression, Group by port, Sorted input.

Aggregate Expressions: are allowed only in aggregate transformations. can include conditional clauses and non-
aggregate functions. can also include one aggregate function nested into another aggregate function.

Aggregate Functions: AVG, COUNT, FIRST, LAST, MAX, MEDIAN, MIN, PERCENTILE, STDDEV, SUM,
VARIANCE
Application Source Qualifier Transformation

Represents the rows that the Integration Service reads from an application, such as an ERP source, when it runs a
session.It is an Active & Connected transformation.

Custom Transformation

It works with procedures you create outside the designer interface to extend PowerCenter functionality. calls a
procedure from a shared library or DLL. It is active/passive & connected type.

You can use CT to create T. that require multiple input groups and multiple output groups.

Custom transformation allows you to develop the transformation logic in a procedure. Some of the PowerCenter
transformations are built using the Custom transformation. Rules that apply to Custom transformations, such as
blocking rules, also apply to transformations built using Custom transformations. PowerCenter provides two sets of
functions called generated and API functions. The Integration Service uses generated functions to interface with the
procedure. When you create a Custom transformation and generate the source code files, the Designer includes the
generated functions in the files. Use the API functions in the procedure code to develop the transformation logic.

Difference between Custom and External Procedure Transformation? In Custom T, input and output functions occur
separately.The Integration Service passes the input data to the procedure using an input function. The output
function is a separate function that you must enter in the procedure code to pass output data to the Integration
Service. In contrast, in the External Procedure transformation, an external procedure function does both input and
output, and its parameters consist of all the ports of the transformation.

Data Masking Transformation

Passive & Connected. It is used to change sensitive production data to realistic test data for non production
environments. It creates masked data for development, testing, training and data mining. Data relationship and
referential integrity are maintained in the masked data.

For example: It returns masked value that has a realistic format for SSN, Credit card number, birthdate, phone
number, etc. But is not a valid value. Masking types: Key Masking, Random Masking, Expression Masking, Special
Mask format. Default is no masking.

Expression Transformation

Passive & Connected. are used to perform non-aggregate functions, i.e to calculate values in a single row. Example:
to calculate discount of each product or to concatenate first and last names or to convert date to a string field.

You can create an Expression transformation in the Transformation Developer or the Mapping Designer.
Components: Transformation, Ports, Properties, Metadata Extensions.

External Procedure

Passive & Connected or Unconnected. It works with procedures you create outside of the Designer interface to
extend PowerCenter functionality. You can create complex functions within a DLL or in the COM layer of windows
and bind it to external procedure transformation. To get this kind of extensibility, use the Transformation Exchange
(TX) dynamic invocation interface built into PowerCenter. You must be an experienced programmer to use TX and
use multi-threaded code in external procedures.
Filter Transformation

Active & Connected. It allows rows that meet the specified filter condition and removes the rows that do not meet
the condition. For example, to find all the employees who are working in NewYork or to find out all the faculty
member teaching Chemistry in a state. The input ports for the filter must come from a single transformation. You
cannot concatenate ports from more than one transformation into the Filter transformation. Components:
Transformation, Ports, Properties, Metadata Extensions.

HTTP Transformation

Passive & Connected. It allows you to connect to an HTTP server to use its services and applications. With an
HTTP transformation, the Integration Service connects to the HTTP server, and issues a request to retrieves data or
posts data to the target or downstream transformation in the mapping.

Authentication types: Basic, Digest and NTLM. Examples: GET, POST and SIMPLE POST.

Java Transformation

Active or Passive & Connected. It provides a simple native programming interface to define transformation
functionality with the Java programming language. You can use the Java transformation to quickly define simple or
moderately complex transformation functionality without advanced knowledge of the Java programming language
or an external Java development environment.

Joiner Transformation

Active & Connected. It is used to join data from two related heterogeneous sources residing in different locations or
to join data from the same source. In order to join two sources, there must be at least one or more pairs of matching
column between the sources and a must to specify one source as master and the other as detail. For example: to join
a flat file and a relational source or to join two flat files or to join a relational source and a XML source. 
The Joiner transformation supports the following types of joins:

 Normal

Normal join discards all the rows of data from the master and detail source that do not match, based on the
condition.

 Master Outer

Master outer join discards all the unmatched rows from the master source and keeps all the rows from the
detail source and the matching rows from the master source.

 Detail Outer

Detail outer join keeps all rows of data from the master source and the matching rows from the detail
source. It discards the unmatched rows from the detail source.

 Full Outer

Full outer join keeps all rows of data from both the master and detail sources.
Limitations on the pipelines you connect to the Joiner transformation:
*You cannot use a Joiner transformation when either input pipeline contains an Update Strategy transformation.
*You cannot use a Joiner transformation if you connect a Sequence Generator transformation directly before the
Joiner transformation.

Lookup Transformation

Passive & Connected or UnConnected. It is used to look up data in a flat file, relational table, view, or synonym. It
compares lookup transformation ports (input ports) to the source column values based on the lookup condition. Later
returned values can be passed to other transformations. You can create a lookup definition from a source qualifier
and can also use multiple Lookup transformations in a mapping.

You can perform the following tasks with a Lookup transformation:

*Get a related value. Retrieve a value from the lookup table based on a value in the source. For example, the source
has an employee ID. Retrieve the employee name from the lookup table.
*Perform a calculation. Retrieve a value from a lookup table and use it in a calculation. For example, retrieve a sales
tax percentage, calculate a tax, and return the tax to a target.
*Update slowly changing dimension tables. Determine whether rows exist in a target.

Lookup Components: Lookup source, Ports, Properties, Condition.

Types of Lookup:
1) Relational or flat file lookup.
2) Pipeline lookup.
3) Cached or uncached lookup.
4) connected or unconnected lookup.

Normalizer Transformation

Active & Connected. The Normalizer transformation processes multiple-occurring columns or multiple-occurring
groups of columns in each source row and returns a row for each instance of the multiple-occurring data. It is used
mainly with COBOL sources where most of the time data is stored in de-normalized format.

You can create following Normalizer transformation:

*VSAM Normalizer transformation. A non-reusable transformation that is a Source Qualifier transformation for a
COBOL source. VSAM stands for Virtual Storage Access Method, a file access method for IBM mainframe.
*Pipeline Normalizer transformation. A transformation that processes multiple-occurring data from relational tables
or flat files. This is default when you create a normalizer transformation.

Components: Transformation, Ports, Properties, Normalizer, Metadata Extensions.

Rank Transformation

Active & Connected. It is used to select the top or bottom rank of data. You can use it to return the largest or
smallest numeric value in a port or group or to return the strings at the top or the bottom of a session sort order. For
example, to select top 10 Regions where the sales volume was very high or to select 10 lowest priced products. As
an active transformation, it might change the number of rows passed through it. Like if you pass 100 rows to the
Rank transformation, but select to rank only the top 10 rows, passing from the Rank transformation to another
transformation. You can connect ports from only one transformation to the Rank transformation. You can also create
local variables and write non-aggregate expressions.

Router Transformation
Active & Connected. It is similar to filter transformation because both allow you to apply a condition to test data.
The only difference is, filter transformation drops the data that do not meet the condition whereas router has an
option to capture the data that do not meet the condition and route it to a default output group.
If you need to test the same input data based on multiple conditions, use a Router transformation in a mapping
instead of creating multiple Filter transformations to perform the same task. The Router transformation is more
efficient.

Sequence Generator Transformation

Passive & Connected transformation. It is used to create unique primary key values or cycle through a sequential
range of numbers or to replace missing primary keys.

It has two output ports: NEXTVAL and CURRVAL. You cannot edit or delete these ports. Likewise, you cannot
add ports to the transformation. NEXTVAL port generates a sequence of numbers by connecting it to a
transformation or target. CURRVAL is the NEXTVAL value plus one or NEXTVAL plus the Increment By value. 
You can make a Sequence Generator reusable, and use it in multiple mappings. You might reuse a Sequence
Generator when you perform multiple loads to a single target.

For non-reusable Sequence Generator transformations, Number of Cached Values is set to zero by default, and the
Integration Service does not cache values during the session.For non-reusable Sequence Generator transformations,
setting Number of Cached Values greater than zero can increase the number of times the Integration Service
accesses the repository during the session. It also causes sections of skipped values since unused cached values are
discarded at the end of each session.

For reusable Sequence Generator transformations, you can reduce Number of Cached Values to minimize discarded
values, however it must be greater than one. When you reduce the Number of Cached Values, you might increase
the number of times the Integration Service accesses the repository to cache values during the session.

Sorter Transformation

Active & Connected transformation. It is used sort data either in ascending or descending order according to a
specified sort key. You can also configure the Sorter transformation for case-sensitive sorting, and specify whether
the output rows should be distinct. When you create a Sorter transformation in a mapping, you specify one or more
ports as a sort key and configure each sort key port to sort in ascending or descending order.

Source Qualifier Transformation

Active & Connected transformation. When adding a relational or a flat file source definition to a mapping, you need
to connect it to a Source Qualifier transformation. The Source Qualifier is used to join data originating from the
same source database, filter rows when the Integration Service reads source data, Specify an outer join rather than
the default inner join and to specify sorted ports.
It is also used to select only distinct values from the source and to create a custom query to issue a special SELECT
statement for the Integration Service to read source data

SQL Transformation

Active/Passive & Connected transformation. The SQL transformation processes SQL queries midstream in a
pipeline. You can insert, delete, update, and retrieve rows from a database. You can pass the database connection
information to the SQL transformation as input data at run time. The transformation processes external SQL scripts
or SQL queries that you create in an SQL editor. The SQL transformation processes the query and returns rows and
database errors.

Stored Procedure Transformation

Passive & Connected or UnConnected transformation. It is useful to automate time-consuming tasks and it is also
used in error handling, to drop and recreate indexes and to determine the space in database, a specialized calculation
etc. The stored procedure must exist in the database before creating a Stored Procedure transformation, and the
stored procedure can exist in a source, target, or any database with a valid connection to the Informatica Server.
Stored Procedure is an executable script with SQL statements and control statements, user-defined variables and
conditional statements.

Transaction Control Transformation

Active & Connected. You can control commit and roll back of transactions based on a set of rows that pass through
a Transaction Control transformation. Transaction control can be defined within a mapping or within a session.
Components: Transformation, Ports, Properties, Metadata Extensions.

Union Transformation

Active & Connected. The Union transformation is a multiple input group transformation that you use to merge data
from multiple pipelines or pipeline branches into one pipeline branch. It merges data from multiple sources similar
to the UNION ALL SQL statement to combine the results from two or more SQL statements. Similar to the UNION
ALL statement, the Union transformation does not remove duplicate rows.
Rules
1) You can create multiple input groups, but only one output group.
2) All input groups and the output group must have matching ports. The precision, datatype, and scale must be
identical across all groups.
3) The Union transformation does not remove duplicate rows. To remove duplicate rows, you must add another
transformation such as a Router or Filter transformation.
4) You cannot use a Sequence Generator or Update Strategy transformation upstream from a Union transformation.
5) The Union transformation does not generate transactions.
Components: Transformation tab, Properties tab, Groups tab, Group Ports tab.

Unstructured Data Transformation

Active/Passive and connected. The Unstructured Data transformation is a transformation that processes unstructured
and semi-structured file formats, such as messaging formats, HTML pages and PDF documents. It also transforms
structured formats such as ACORD, HIPAA, HL7, EDI-X12, EDIFACT, AFP, and SWIFT.
Components: Transformation, Properties, UDT Settings, UDT Ports, Relational Hierarchy.

Update Strategy Transformation

Active & Connected transformation. It is used to update data in target table, either to maintain history of data or
recent changes. It flags rows for insert, update, delete or reject within a mapping.

XML Generator Transformation

Active & Connected transformation. It lets you create XML inside a pipeline. The XML Generator transformation
accepts data from multiple ports and writes XML through a single output port.

XML Parser Transformation

Active & Connected transformation. The XML Parser transformation lets you extract XML data from messaging
systems, such as TIBCO or MQ Series, and from other sources, such as files or databases. The XML Parser
transformation functionality is similar to the XML source functionality, except it parses the XML in the pipeline.

XML Source Qualifier Transformation

Active & Connected transformation. XML Source Qualifier is used only with an XML source definition. It
represents the data elements that the Informatica Server reads when it executes a session with XML sources. has one
input or output port for every column in the XML source.

External Procedure Transformation

Active & Connected/UnConnected transformation. Sometimes, the standard transformations such as Expression
transformation may not provide the functionality that you want. In such cases External procedure is useful to
develop complex functions within a dynamic link library (DLL) or UNIX shared library, instead of creating the
necessary Expression transformations in a mapping.
Advanced External Procedure Transformation

Active & Connected transformation. It operates in conjunction with procedures, which are created outside of the
Designer interface to extend PowerCenter/PowerMart functionality. It is useful in creating external transformation
applications, such as sorting and aggregation, which require all input rows to be processed before emitting any
output rows.

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