Informatica PowerCenter (legacy)

Score7.9 out of 10

94 Reviews and Ratings

What is Informatica PowerCenter (legacy)?

Informatica PowerCenter was data integration technology designed to form the foundation for data integration initiatives, application migration, or analytics. It is a legacy product.

Categories & Use Cases

Connect to traditional data sources
Ability to connect to traditional data sources like relational databases, flat files, XML files and packaged applications
Category average: 8.8
Data model creation
Ability to create and maintain data models using a graphical tool to define relationships between data
Category average: 8.4
Business rules and workflow
Ability to define and manage business rules and workflows
Category average: 8.3

Metadata management
Automated discovery of metadata with ability to synchronize and share metadata with other tools like Master Data Management
Category average: 7.9
Complex transformations
Complex data transformations are data normalization, advanced data parsing, etc.
Category average: 7.2
Collaboration
Collaboration is enabled by a shared repository of project information and metadata
Category average: 7.2

Jaime Maña View profile

Business Developer / Advisor EDM in Professional Services at Freelance (1001-5000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Informatica PowerExchange Connectors provide access to different sources of data in multiple locations, differente RDB systems and DATA WAREHOUSE environments in the mode SaaS with high performance and security. The platform are used in a cloud-based mode, making access very simple and without major problems. Also use for transformation data and connectivity with API´s in cloud(Internal and External. The company have more than 20 offcies in the world with differente enviroments and API's locally development.

Pros

Access to different RDB, API's Data (External / Internal)
The connectors access to data from social networks such as Twitter or LinkedIn
Connectors provide access to data in AS400 systems with a minimun development of interface
The dashboard is is completely customizable
for any organization

Cons

Define customer business rulers to put the data in the repository with easy develpoment.
Quickly transfer and integrate data between cloud and local RDB/SYSTEMS
Very simple to navigate between data before and after integration/transformation was made

Return on Investment

Positive: reduce the time of testing new API's with a data integrationin a 35% aprox.
Positive: improve the time to access to quality data for all branchs and different offcies in the world inmore than 100%
Positive: reduce the cost of maintenance of servers for data.(Now the data is in Cloud) in 100%(The local servers was eliminated)

Alternatives Considered

ThreatQuotient

Other Software Used

Oracle Database, AWS Serverless Application Repository, Salesforce CMS

Gurcan Orhan View profile

Data Quality Management Software Development Manager at Yapı Kredi (10,001+ employees employees)

Pros

Transformation speed.
Supports a multi-User development environment.
A fast learning curve.

Cons

It needs additional hardware.
Lots of windows sometimes reduce your focus.
It would be better to have a more compact design with the ability to aim toward specific topics.

Return on Investment

It works seamlessly with other Informatica products (i.e. Metadata Management, Data Quality).
Since data is read and written through the network, when you cannot perform E-LT you'll need more hardware.
Good for a multi-user development environment.

Alternatives Considered

Oracle Data Integrator, Oracle Warehouse Builder, Talend Data Integration and SAP Data Services

Other Software Used

Oracle Data Integrator, SAP Data Services, Oracle Warehouse Builder

Usability

Jody Gitchel View profile

Senior Data Solutions Architect in Information Technology at Laser Spine Institute (501-1000 employees employees)

Pros

Enforces enterprise wide ETL development standards.
Provides code re-usability with shared connections and objects.
Particularly adept at integrating a wide range of disparate data sources (handles flat files particularly well).
Well suited for moving large amounts of data.

Cons

There are too many ways to perform the same or similar functions which in turn makes it challenging to trace what a workflow is doing and at which point (ex. sessions can be designed as static or re-usable and the override can occur at the session or workflow, or both which can be counter productive and confusing when troubleshooting).
The power in structured design is a double edged sword. Simple tasks for a POC can become cumbersome. Ex. if you want to move some data to test a process, you first have to create your sources by importing them which means an ODBC connection or similar will need to be configured, you in turn have to develop your targets and all of the essential building blocks before being able to begin actual development. While I am on sources and targets, I think of a table definition as just that and find it counter intuitive to have to design a table as both a source and target and manage them as different objects. It would be more intuitive to have a table definition and its source/target properties defined by where you drag and drop it in the mapping.
There are no checkpoints or data viewer type functions without designing an entire mapping and workflow. If you would like to simply run a job up to a point and check the throughput, an entire mapping needs to be completed and you would workaround this by creating a flat file target.

Return on Investment

PowerCenter has been instrumental in being the center of all data movement within the organization.
It has also provided a foundation for which re-usability and scalability are the focus.
Finding talent with experience and expertise in PowerCenter is far more likely due to its presence and market share.

Alternatives Considered

SQL Server Integration Services, Pentaho and IBM InfoSphere DataStage

Verified User

Engineer in Engineering (5001-10,000 employees employees)

Pros

Informatica Powercenter is an innovative software that works with ETL-type data integration. Connectivity to almost all the database systems.
Great documentation and customer support.
It has a various solution to address data quality issues. data masking, data virtualization. It has various supporting tools or MDM, IDQ, Analyst, BigData which can be used to analyze data and correct it.

Cons

It doesn't have much scheduling options and the tool is not very much capable if we schedule more jobs.
Debugging the workflows and mappings are very hard with Informatica PowerCenter.
Lookup transformation on large tables consumes more Memory and CPU.

Return on Investment

Flexible and stability when transforming large amount of data.
Better and robust integration with cloud data warehouse.
We recognized the large project scope and had all stakeholders involved when on-boarding this solution. We had data transformation diagram ready before the implementation work which saved us a tons of potential rework.

Alternatives Considered

Talend Data Integration

Other Software Used

MySQL, Oracle Database, Talend Data Integration

Verified User

Employee in Information Technology (10,001+ employees employees)

Pros

Extracting, transforming and loading data to and from different databases.
Development, testing and maintenance of code is fairly simple.
Good performance even during processing of large amount of data.
Amazing ability to connect with different types of sources and targets available in the market.

Cons

Performance with ODBC drivers is comparatively slow which ends up in taking a lot of time.
Deployment is bit complex.
Clobs and Blobs datatypes are very difficult to handle.

Informatica PowerCenter (legacy)

What is Informatica PowerCenter (legacy)?

Categories & Use Cases

Key Features

Top Performing Features

Connect to traditional data sources

Data model creation

Business rules and workflow

Areas for Improvement

Metadata management

Complex transformations

Collaboration

Reviews

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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Cons

Return on Investment

Alternatives Considered

Other Software Used

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Return on Investment

Alternatives Considered

Other Software Used

Usability

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Return on Investment

Alternatives Considered

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Return on Investment

Alternatives Considered

Other Software Used

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Usability

Other Software Used