Informatica

1. Give an example of a complex transformation u created using Informatica

2. ETL Process in recent project and error handling
3. How Many Mapping u has in Ur recent Project?
4. Explain the ETL Architecture
5. What was the challenging task u felt when u working with Informatica?
6. How do u fine tune a session?
7. How did u implement update strategy?
8. Complex Session scheduling in ur experience
9. If you can’t find what you are looking for in lookup table, how do you handle?
10. If u has data coming from different sources what transformation will u use in your
designer?
11. What happens when u uses the delete or update or reject or insert statement in Ur
update strategy?
12. How does u set the size of block buffer?
13. Can u access a repository created in previous version of Informatica?
14. What happens if the Informatica Server doesn’t find the session parameter in the
parameter file?
15. How many server instances can you register to a repository?
16. What was the size of your warehouse?
17. What is Star Schema?
18. What is the difference between inner and outer join?
19. How big was your fact table?
20. How did you handle performance issues If you have data coming in from multiple
sources, just walk thru the process of loading it into the target
21. How will u convert rows into columns or columns into rows
22. Do you have any experience in OOP
23. What is the syntax difference for using outer join in SQL Server / Oracle
24. What are the steps involved in the migration from older version to newer version of
Informatica Server?
25. Have you worked in conjunction with Oracle DBA(s) and UNIX administrators?
26. Have you worked with Oracle front-end tools?
27. What kind of analysis you did in the existing Data warehouse environment?
28. What problem you faced and what were your recommendations (based on your last
project)?
29. How to run a session, which contains mapplet?
30. Differentiate between Load Manager and DTM?
31. What is the objective behind Partitioning in Oracle?
32. What is ZABO (Zero based administration)?
33. What is AIS (Application Integration Software)
34. While creating aggregator transformation, have u enabled sorted input option? What
exactly it does?
35. How did u do increment load?
36. What is dynamic insert?
37. What are session parameters? How does u set them?
38. When does u use mapping parameters? (In which transformations)
39. What is a parameter? When and where does u use them? When does the value will be
created (Designing time/run time)? If u don’t create parameter what will happen?
40. How does u change parameter when u moves it from development to production?
41. How does the session recovery work?
42. Why use shortcuts (Instead of making copies)?
43. Where is the reject loader?
44. How do you use reject loader?
45. Does u have to change the reject file before using reject loader utility?
46. Debugger, what are the modules, what are the options you can specify when using
debugger, can you change the expression condition dynamically when the debugger is
running?
47. Mapplets, can you use an active transformation in a mapplet?
48. Can u use flat files in Mapplets?
49. How many transformations can be used in a mapplet?
50. Can a joiner be used in a mapplet?
51. What are active transformations?
52. How can you join 3 tables?
53. Why can’t you use a single Joiner to join 3 tables?
54. Global and Local shortcuts? Advantages?
55. Mapping variables, parameters syntax, if you create mapping variables and parameters
in mapplet can u use them in the mapping?
56. Have you worked with/created Parameter file?
57. What’s the layout of parameter file (what does a parameter file contain)?
58. Why does u use Mapping Parameter and mapping variable?
59. Where does u create/define mapping parameter and mapping variable?
60. Session Recovery. 1000 rows in the source of which 500 passed through and then I killed
the session. Can you perform a recovery and how?
61. Slowly changing dimensions, types and where will you use them?
62. What are the modules in Power Center?
63. Filter transformation in the condition one of the data is NULL would the record be
dropped?
64. Parameter & variable differences?
65. Reusable transformation & shortcut differences?
66. Mapplets, can u use source qualifier? can u use sequence generator? can u use target?
67. Implementation methodology (top down or bottom up?
68. Does u have knowledge in ralph Kimball methodology? According to his methodology
what all u need before u build a data warehouse?
69. How does u recover rows from a failed session?
70. Sequence generator, when u move from development to production how will u reset?
71. What’s there in global repository?
72. repository user profiles
73. How does u set a variable in incremental aggregation?
74. What did u do in source pre load stored procedure?
75. Scheduling properties, what’s the default (sequential)?
76. in a concurrent batch if a session fails, can u start again from that session
77. When u moves from development to production how will u retain a variable?
78. Partition, what happens if the specified key range is shorter and longer
79. performance tuning (what u did in performance tuning)
80. What are conformed dimensions?
81. What are factless facts? And in which scenario will you use such kinds of fact tables?
82. Can you avoid static cache in the lookup transformation? I mean can you disable
caching in a lookup transformation?
83. What is the meaning of complex transformation?
84. In any project how many mappings they will use (minimum)?
85. How do u implement unconnected. Stored procedure in a mapping?
86. Can u access a repository created in previous version of Informatica?
87. What happens if the informatica Server doesn’t find the session parameter in the
parameter file?
88. How big was your fact table
89. How did you handle performance issues if you have data coming in from multiple
sources, just walk through the process of loading it into the target?
90. How will u convert rows into columns or columns into rows?
91. What are the steps involved in the migration from older version to newer version of
Informatica Server?
92. What are the main features of Oracle 8i with context to data warehouse?
93. How to run a session, which contains mapplet?
94. What are session parameters? How does u set them?
95. When does u use mapping parameters? (In which transformations)
96. What is a parameter? When and where does u use them? when does the value will
be created? (Designing time or run time). If u don’t create parameter what will
happen?

1. Where exactly the sources and target information stored?

2. Informatica Repository Tables
3.What is the difference between power mart and power centre. Elaborate.
4. Power center is a global repository
5. What are variable ports and list two situations when they can be used?
6. What are the parts of Informatica Server?
7. How does the server recognize the source and target databases. Elaborate on this.
8. List the transformation used for the following:
a) Heterogeneous Sources
b) Homogeneous Sources
c) Find the 5 highest paid employees within a dept.
d) Create a Summary table
e) Generate surrogate keys
9. What is the difference between sequential batch and concurrent batch and which is
recommended and why?
10. Designer is used for____________________
11. Repository Manager is used for__________________
12. Server Manager is used for______________________
13. Server is used for_____________________________
14. A session S_MAP1 is in Repository A. While running the session, error message has been
displayed as “server hot-ws270 is connect to Repository B”. What does it mean?
15. How do you do error handling in Informatica?
16. How do you implement scheduling in Informatica?
17. What is the meaning of up gradation of repository?
18. How can you run a session without using server manager?
19. What is indicator file and where it is used?
20. What are pre and post session stored procedures? Write a suitable example.
21. Consider two cases:
1. Power Center Server and Client on the same machine
2. Power Center Sever and Client on the different machines
what is the basic difference in these two setups and which is recommended?
22. Informatica Server and Client are in different machines. You run a session from the
server manager by specifying the source and target databases. It displays an error. You are
confident that everything is correct. Then why it is displaying the error?
23. When you connect to repository for the first time it asks you for user name & password
of repository and database both. But subsequent times it asks only repository password.
Why?
24. What is the difference between normal and bulk loading? Which one is recommended?
25. What is a test load?
26. What is an incremental aggregation and when it should be implemented?
27. How can you use an Oracle sequences in Informatica? You have an Informatica sequence
generator transformation also. Which one is better to use?
28. What is the difference between a shortcut of an object and copy of an object? Compare
them?
29. What are mapplet and a reusable transformation?
30. How do you implement configuration management in Informatica?
31. What are Business Components in Informatica?
32. Dimension Object created in Oracle can be imported in Designer (T / F)
33. Cubes contain measures (T / F) (ans: true)
34. COM components can be used in Informatica (T / F ) ( a n s : t r u e )
35. Lookup is an Active Transformation (T/F) (ans: true)
36. What is the advantage of persistent cache? When it should be used?
37. When will you use SQL override in a lookup transformation?
38. Two different admin users created for repository are______ and_______
39. Two Default User groups created in the repository are____ and______
40. A mapping contains
• Source Table S_Time (Start_Year, End_Year)
• Target Table Tim_Dim (Date, Day, Month, Year, Quarter )
Stored procedure transformation : A procedure has two input parameters I_Start_Year,
I_End_Year and output parameter as O_Date, Day , Month, Year, Quarter. If this session is
running, how many rows will be available in the target and why?
40. Two Sources S1, S2 containing measures M1,M2,M3, 4 Dimensions D1,D2,D3,D4, 1 Fact
F1 containing measures M1, M2,M3 and Dimension Surrogate keys K1,K2,K3,K4
(a) Write a SQL statement to populate Fact table F1
(b) Design a mapping in Informatica for loading of Fact table F1.
41. What is the difference between data cache and index cache?
42. When should one create a lookup transformation?
43. How do you handle performance issues in Informatica? Where can you monitor the
performance?
44. List and Discuss two approaches for updating the target table in Informatica and how
they are different?
45. You have created a lookup transformation for a certain condition which if true returns
multiple rows .When you go to the target and see only one row has come and not all. Why
is it so and how it can be corrected.
46. Where is the log files generally stored? Can you change the path of the file? What can
the path be?
47. Where is the cache (lookup, index) created and how can you see it?

Business Objects

1. When you are installing BO with what profile you will enter?
2. What is short cut join?
3. What is load balancing? Fail Over?
4. What is clustering?
5. What is Universe?
6. Define Loops and how to resolve them?
7. What were the errors which you encountered most while running BO reports?
8. How to schedule BO Reports?
9. What are the methods available in Document class of the Web-I SDK?
10. What is Slicing and dicing?