Workflow Manager Tool in Informatica

What is the Informatica Workflow Manager?

 

The Informatica Workflow Manager is a client tool that executes workflows for the mappings that have been developed in Designer.

 

Who uses the Informatica Workflow Manager?

 

Informatica Workflow Manager is used by system administrators and developers, alike.

 

Workflow Manager Terminology

Task Developer – Used to create and view sessions, commands, and emails executed in a workfow.
 
Worklet Designer – Used to create and view worklet
 
Workflow Designer – Used to create, view and schedule          workflows by connecting together tasks and worklets.
 
Task – A session, command or email used in workflows
 
Worklet – An object that groups sets of tasks.
 
Workflow – A set of instructions that tells the Integration Service how and when to run tasks such as sessions, email notifications, and shell commands.
 
Connection – An object that defines a connection in the repository. Connections can be databases, ftp sites or applications
 
source / $target – Parameterized source and target connections defined within a session, respectively. They are only set once per session.
 
Parameter File – A list of values read by the Integration Service during runtime.
 
Unoverride – A button used to revert back to an original value in a workflow or session.
 
Normal Load – A load that invokes database transactional logging. Default load for any session that contains an update transformation.
 
Bulk Load – A load that bypasses database transactional logging.
 
Full Load – An initial load of data from the source containing historic data.
 
Incremental Load – Subsequent loads that bring in new or modified data since the previous ETL process.
 
Assignment – assigns a value to a workflow variable,
 
Command – executes a shell command during the workflow.
 
Control – stops or aborts the workflow.
 
Decision – specifies a condition to evaluate.
 
Email – sends emails during workflow.
 
Event-wait – waits for an event to occur.
 
Event-raised – notifies the event wait task that an event has occurred.
 
Session – runs a mapping that has been created in Designer.
 
Timer – waits for a timed event to occur.

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Functions of Informatica Workflow Manager:

 

1. To define source and target connection information

 

2. To create tasks

 

3. To create workflows

 

4. To alert successes and failures

 

5. To override mapping level properties

 

To define source and target connection information:

 

1. Click on the “Connections” tab. Choose “Relational...” to create a database connection object.

 

2. Choose “New” to create a new connection in the “Relational Connection Browser.”

 

3. In the “Select Subtype” window, choose the database platform to which you are connecting.

 

4. Name your Connection. Enter your username, password, and connection string.

 

To create tasks:

 

1. Click on Task Developer tool.

 

2. Click on the “Task” tab. Choose “Create...” to create a new Task.

 

3. Choose “Session” from the dropdown menu. Name your session and click “Create.”

 

4. Choose the mapping for your session from the popup menu. Click “OK.”

 

5. Click “Done” to create the task in the workspace.

 

6. Double-click on your session in the Task Developer workspace.

7. Click on the “Mapping” tab.

 

8. Click on the icon in the Sources folder to open the designer mapping’s source qualifier transformation.

 

9. Click on the icon under the “Connections” Value column and choose your source connection.

 

10. Click on the icon in the Targets folder to open the designer mapping’s target table.

 

11. Click on the icon under the “Connections” Value column and choose your target connection.

 

12. Click on “Files, Directories, and Commands” in the left-hand column.

 

13. Under the “Parameter Filename,” write ‘$PMSourceFileDir\’ and the parameter filename.

 

14. Click “OK” to close the Session task.

 

 

To create workflows:

 

1. Click on the “Workflow Designer” tool.

 

2. Click on the “Workflow” tab at the top of the screen. Choose “Create...” to create a new workflow.

3. Name the workflow and click “OK.”

 

4. Drag and drop your session into the Workflow Designer workspace.

 

5. Connect the icon to the session using the task link tool.

 

To alert successes and failures:

 

1. Double-click on the session in the Workflow Designer workspace.

 

2. Under the “General” tab, check box ‘Fail parent if this task fails’ and ‘Fail parent if this task does not run.’ Click “OK.”

 

 

To override mapping level properties:

 

1.Click on the Task Developer tool.

 

2.Double-click on the session. Click on the “Mappings” tab.

 

3.Click on the source in the Source folder.

 

4.Scroll down and click in the “Value” column of the attribute that you would like to override in the Properties section.

 

5.Click on the icon to open the formula box. This is where you can override the mapping level property.

6.After entering your new formula, click “OK” to view the changes in the “Values” column.

 

7.To revert your changes, click on the “Revert” button that appears in the “Unoverride” column.

 

 

The BI Applications use SQL Query overrides to create unique full and incremental load sessions.

 

BI Applications and Workflow Manager

 

•One Session per Workflow

 

•Full and Incremental Workflows

 

•Connections by Parameters

 

•Parameter Files

 

One Session per Workflow

 

The Workflow Manager’s flexibility allows for dynamic and complex workflow to be designed and executed. These workflows contain dozens of decision and event tasks to help guide the Integration Service through the execution order of sessions and worklets.

The downside of this approach is that development takes extreme care and may takes days or weeks to fine tune.

To our luck, the BI Applications take the guess work out of the execution plan development by providing a tool called the Data Administration Console a.k.a. DAC.

In order for DAC to build an execution order based on session (mapping) dependencies, there must be a one to one relationship between workflows and sessions.

 

Full and Incremental Workflows

 

To keep mapping maintenance at a minimum, the BI Applications created two sessions for each mapping, Full and Incremental. These session will be identical with the exception of the “Sql Override”.

 

Full Load Session:

 

Incremental Load Session:

 

Connections by Parameters

 

The session’s source and target connections are managed by $DBConnection_OLTP and $DBConnection_OLAP parameters. Parameterized connection values allow connection objects referenced by the session to change without the need for modifying the connection objects.

 

Connection values passed via parameters must match the connections objects established in the “Connections” tab.

 

 

 

Parameter Files

 

Parameter values are read by the Integration Service and are passed down into session, mappings or mapplets. Parameter values are sourced from .txt files located on the Integration Service’s ‘$PMSourceFileDir\’ directory.

The parameter file name is specified in the session’s “Properties” tab under the “Parameter Filename” attribute.

 

Sample Parameter file.