How to handle high precision dates in Informatica? the ones with milliseconds.

Whenever you import a source from Oracle with a timestamp field, Informatica automatically imports that field as date with precision of 26 and scale 6. This means that any digits in the milliseconds range will get truncated while reading or writing to the table/file. This means losing the intended precision of data resulting in incorrect […]

How to pass a parameter file to an Informatica workflow at run time

The name and path to the parameter file is often hardcoded in the workflow or session properties tab. There is no option to parameterize the parameter file at the workflow or session level. Understandably so, as its the parameter file itself. However there are times when you need to invoke the same workflow with different […]

Why do Informatica workflows go into a Waiting state?

Sometimes Informatica workflows when triggered can go into a waiting state instead of a running state. This usually happens when there are a number of workflows running in parallel. Informatica admin console has a property where the Admin can define the maximum number of concurrent sessions that can run on the server. It is decided […]

How to create a password protected .zip file using Informatica

In Informatica there is no inherent option to zip files. But sometimes there are requirements which need a compressed file with password protection to be sent over the internet to external vendors In order to fulfill this requirement you should have a compression tool, which has a command line interface, installed on your Informatica server. […]

How to avoid Null = Null comparisons in Informatica lookup transformation

Informatica lookup transformation by default evaluates Null = Null condition to be true. This means if you do not explicitly take care of passing Not Null values to lookup input ports then the lookup might return random records from the lookup source. It is not certain if this is a bug or done intentionally by […]

How to reduce the size of cache files created by an Informatica session

Informatica at run time creates different types of cache files depending on the transformations used in the mapping and configuration of the session. Sometimes the cache file size can get so huge that the whole disk gets used up which causes fatal errors in other parallel running workflows and sessions. Huge cache files are also […]

How to return multiple columns from an Unconnected Lookup in Informatica

A lookup transformation configured as an Unconnected Lookup can only return one port. However, there are times when you need to quickly modify a mapping to return more than one port from the unconnected lookup. There are two ways to do this:- 1. To convert the unconnected lookup to a connected lookup in the pipeline […]

What happens when a Return port is not specified in an Unconnected Informatica Lookup

An unconnected lookup in Informatica can return only one port’s value. This is usually the port which is marked as ‘R’ in the Ports tab of the lookup transformation But if there is only one Output port in the lookup transformation and all the other other ports are the ones used in the condition of […]

How to remove the hash symbol from Informatica header output

In Informatica there is a very handy option to automatically generate column names as a header row in the flat file output. This option serves its purpose except for the fact it places a “#” (hash) symbol at the beginning of the header row by default. And, it seems there is no easy way to […]