[Informatica] Software Architecture illustrated

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Informatica Software Architecture illustrated
Informatica ETL product, known as Informatica Power Center consists of 3 main components.

1. Informatica PowerCenter Client Tools:
These are the development tools installed at developer end. These tools enable a developer to

•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)

2. Informatica PowerCenter Repository:
Repository is the heart of Informatica tools. Repository is a kind of data inventory where all the data related to mappings, sources, targets etc is kept. This is the place where all the metadata for your application is stored. All the client tools and Informatica Server fetch data from Repository. Informatica client and server without repository is same as a PC without memory/harddisk, which has got the ability to process data but has no data to process. This can be treated as backend of Informatica.

3. Informatica PowerCenter Server:
Server is the place, where all the executions take place. Server makes physical connections to sources/targets, fetches data, applies the transformations mentioned in the mapping and loads the data in the target system.