Informatica Basic Interview Questions!!!

1. What is the difference  between Informatica 8x and 9x?
2. How many types of fact and dimension tables are available?
3. What is fact-less fact table ?
4. How lookup is active in informatica 9.1 and what is the additional option added to lookup ?
5. How to update a table without update strategy or a table which does not have a primary key ?
6. What is the difference between lookup and joiner ?
7. What happens if we select all the port of an aggregator or if we dont select any port for group by?
8. What will be the output of a group of a router where no condition is given?
9. What are the limitations of a joiner ?
10. Is Union transformation in Informatica same as Union in Oracle? How to do the same as Oracle Union in Informatica?
11. What is GK_ID and GCID in Normalizer ?
12. Explain the use of Newlookup port in Dynamic lookup ?
13. What is the use of MD5 function in informatica?
14. Explain Incremental aggregation with a scenario ?
15. How to declare a mapplet variable in parameter file?
16. How to pass a mapping variable from one mapping to another with the help of workflow variable?
17. What is the command we need to use in parameter file to use both session parameter file and workflow parameter file simultaneously?  [$PMMergeSessParamFile= TRUE]
18. What is the custom property we need to set in order to ignore new line character in between the data enclosed within quote?  [ MatchQuotesPastEndOfLine=Yes]
19. Give an example of Informatica user defined function ?
20. How to handle Event Wait task for dynamically changing file name ?
21. How to include customized header and footer  text for a flat file target?
22. What is session partitioning and how can we load 10 same structure flat file parallely in a single pipeline?  23. What is the use of Push down optimization and what are the limitation or preconditions for PDO?
24. Explain the different types of SCD implementations?
25. What is SCD type 6 approach?
26. What is star schema and Snowflake schema?
27. What is the use and syntax of Mass Update, PMCMD and PMREP commands ?
28.  Explain transaction  control transformation with an example ?
29. What are the methods of code migration from one environment to another environment?
30. Explain the complete process of a workflow run and task performed by Integration service, DTM buffer and all other process threads?
31. If suppose I have a workflow where there are two sessions linked in series, what needs to be done to run the second session only seventh time (weekly once)?
32. How to send a mail when the session starts loading to target?
33. How to handle multiple delimiters in a single file?
34. How will you recover an object which is accidentally deleted?
35. What is process of running multiple instances of a single workflow?



Please mail to jalal.jc@gmail.com for solution of any above question or post your comment/query here..:)

Working With COBOL Copybook in Informatica

•   The data structure from mainframe will come in a COBOL copy book format (.cpy). Sample copybook content is pasted below.

01 SALES-RECORD.                                                                                                 

                03  HDR-DATA.                                                                          

                   05  HDR-REC-TYPE                             PIC X.

                   05  HDR-STORE                           PIC X(02).

                03  STORE-DATA.

                   05  STORE-NAME                        PIC X(30).

                   05  STORE-ADDR1                       PIC X(30).

                   05  STORE-CITY                            PIC X(30).

                03  DETAIL-DATA REDEFINES STORE-DATA.

                   05  DETAIL-ITEM                            PIC 9(9).

                   05  DETAIL-DESC                         PIC X(30).

                   05  DETAIL-PRICE                   PIC 9(4)V99.

                   05  DETAIL-QTY                             PIC 9(5).

                   05  SUPPLIER-INFO OCCURS 4 TIMES.

                                   10  SUPPLIER-CODE          PIC XX.

                                   10  SUPPLIER-NAME      PIC X(8). 

• We need to add the standard header part and footer part to the copybook and save it as .cbl file which can be imported to Informatica as source definition.

Header: 

IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.

                 PROGRAM-ID.   COPYBOOK.

ENVIRONMENT DIVISION.

                SELECT SALES ASSIGN TO F1.

DATA DIVISION.

FILE SECTION.

FD SALES.

Here ‘SALES’ will be the source Name.

Footer:

WORKING-STORAGE SECTION.

ROCEDURE  DIVISION.

STOP RUN.

• Save the file as Sales.cbl and Import to informatica as shown below.

  

•  The source will be imported like this.

• The mapping will look like this where Cobol source will have a Normalizer by default in place of Source Qualifier.

 

 

   Important things to remember: COBOL copybook will have Redefines and occurrences in the 

   structure. Occurrences we can be removed by multiplying the same column that many times.

  

UNIX Commands Interview Questions!!!

If EMP table is saved as EMP.txt then how to find the Unique salary?

                       cat EMP.txt | cut -f3 -d "|" | sort -u       [also uniq -u  can be used]

How to find the record for EMP_ID=100 ?
 
                       cat EMP.txt | awk 'BEGIN {FS="|"} {if($1==100) print $0}'

How to run a command at back end so that it will run even if the session is closed or   logged out?

          

The command nohup can be used to achieve the same. For example,

    

                       nohup find -name '*' -size +1000k > log.txt

Explain the following commands.

$ ls > file1

$ banner hi-fi > message

$ cat par.3 par.4 par.5 >> report

$ cat file1>file1

$ date ; who

$ date ; who > logfile

$ (date ; who) > logfile

What is the significance of the “tee” command?

It reads the standard input and sends it to the standard output while redirecting a copy of what it has read to the file specified by the user.

What does the command “ $who | sort –logfile > newfile” do?

The input from a pipe can be combined with the input from a file . The trick is to use the special symbol “-“ (a hyphen) for those commands that recognize the hyphen as std input.

In the above command the output from who becomes the std input to sort , meanwhile sort opens the file logfile, the contents of this file is sorted together with the output of who (rep by the hyphen) and the sorted output is redirected to the file newfile.

What does the command “$ls | wc –l > file1” do?

ls becomes the input to wc which counts the number of lines it receives as input and instead of displaying this count , the value is stored in file1.

Which of the following commands is not a filter man , (b) cat , (c) pg , (d) head

Ans: man

A filter is a program which can receive a flow of data from std input, process (or filter) it and send the result to the std output.

 What difference between cmp and diff commands?

cmp - Compares two files byte by byte and displays the first mismatch

diff - tells the changes to be made to make the files identical

What is the use of ‘grep’ command?

‘grep’ is a pattern search command. It searches for the pattern, specified in the command line with appropriate option, in a file(s).

Example : grep 99mx file_name

What is the difference between cat and more command?

Cat displays file contents. If the file is large the contents scroll off the screen before we view it. So command 'more' is like a pager which displays the contents page by page.