Informatica Interview Questions: Work With Data Integration

Have you ever wondered how big companies worldwide manage all of their data successfully? Surely, the must-have a perfectly optimized and up-to-speed data integration program to help them sort all of that information out. Although there are a lot of different programs out there available for usage, one specific tool stands out - Informatica. As of late, Informatica has become one of the most popular data integration tools out there. Surely, with the increase in popularity, there’s a huge increase in the need for Informatica administrators. That’s why today we’ll talk about Informatica interview questions - to help you get ready for the job interview and further your career!

Warming Up

Let’s start at the very beginning and talk about the introductory material. You will notice that there are a few types of such questions that you might encounter during your job interview. First of all, there will be a lot of definition and comparison-based questions. Since we’re talking about the very basics, your potential employers are going to want to see if you know the differences between some of the more fundamental concepts of Informatica.

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Furthermore, a lot of companies love to give example-based Informatica interview questions. These are very convenient, simply because they are unique. The examples of situations that your interviewers might present for you are most likely going to be based on certain events that happened within the company itself. Let’s say, for example, that some data administrators from within the company had encountered a problem some time ago. There were a few ways to solve it, and they did so by choosing one of such ways. During your job interview, your interviewers might want to see what kind of method you would choose to solve the before-mentioned problem if you were to encounter it in your workflow.

The Basics are The Way to Go

A lot of people seem to underestimate basic Informatica interview questions. Everyone has their reasons, but it mostly boils down to people thinking that these questions are going to be so easy that they don’t even require any specific studying. And that’s usually the mindset that makes these people flunk their chances of getting the job.

You could go as far as to say that the basic versions of the questions are the most important ones that you’ll receive during the job interview. This is mostly because these questions (rather, the way you choose to answer them) are going to show both your competence level with Informatica and your character and disposition towards the job itself.

Most companies have special preparation and testing periods in place for new employees. These periods aren’t there to only check if you like the job and if you are suitable for the job. In addition to that, your new workplace will provide you with special training to prepare you for the tasks ahead. This means that even if you don’t have profound knowledge with Informatica, and fail to learn some of the Informatica interview questions and answers, this doesn’t necessarily mean that you won’t get the job.

That’s why character and personality are important. If you show that you’re reputable, trustworthy and truly passionate about the topic and the job - good! If you also possess Informatica skills and can demonstrate them fully - great! Your chances of getting the job increase vastly!

Question 1: What is Informatica?

You’ve probably expected it, but this is most likely going to be the very first of the Informatica admin interview questions that you’ll receive in your job interview.

The most important thing here is that you answer in your own words. Think about it: if you cite a generic definition that you memorized from the internet, what impression will that give to your employers? Remember, they have most likely asked this question a million times before and thus have heard the same amount of answers. They know the most popular definitions by heart - even if they’re quite in-depth, it doesn’t help the situation.

If you want to truly impress your potential employers, try to explain the concept in your own words. This will show that you truly do understand the topic, and can answer this and similar Informatica interview questions concisely and interestingly. Honestly, there is no better way for you to gain instant respect from your employers!

So, back to the question - what is Informatica?

To put it very simply, Informatica is a data management and integration tool that helps companies work with huge amounts of data. Informatica is employed by data administrators (probably the job position that you’re aiming to get) - they transfer, manage and sort the company's data with the help of Informatica.

Question 2: What is a ‘domain’?

Same as in most other cases, domains are used to host a specific set of processes and variables. All of the data located in the domain is covered and managed by a single organizational point.

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Question 3: What is ‘data warehousing’?

A perfect example of one of the most basic of Informatica interview questions, this is also something that employers do like to ask potential employees.

Data warehousing (on an enterprise-level) is a state in which all of the information (data) of the company is kept and developed in a single storage area.

Question 4: What’s the difference between ‘Joiner Transformation’ and ‘Source Qualifier’?

Join Transformation is used to join heterogeneous data, while Source Qualifiers may join data that originates from the same database.

You may or might not have noticed, but this is one of the Informatica scenario-based interview questions. There is a very high possibility that you might get these types of questions during your job interview.

Question 5: Name the types of groups present in router transformation.

Router transformation possesses three types of groups - default, input, and output.

Question 6: You’ve noticed that your colleague is partitioning his sessions. What the benefit of doing that?

By partitioning your session, you can improve the performance of the Informatica server. Partitioning allows the server to perform its various processes in parallel to each other.

This is a good example of the before-mentioned Informatica interview questions that are based on various examples. As you can see, the question itself isn’t necessarily difficult - it’s just presented in a different format.

Question 7: How many repositories can you have?

At any given time, you can have an unlimited number of repositories. It all depends on the number of ports that you possess.

Question 8: What’s the main feature of a ‘Lookup Transformation’?

The main feature of a Lookup Transformation is that it has access to RDBMS - the “Rational Database Management System”.

Question 9: What are the different types of data warehousing schemas that you may apply with Informatica?

In total, there are three types of such schemas - fact constellation, star and snowflake schemas.

Question 10: What is ‘mapplet’?

A mapplet is an object that can be used multiple times. It’s used in mapping - the fact that its features can be reused makes the processes of mapping a lot easier for developers.

Question 11: Can you name any advantages of Informatica over the other Extract, Transform, Load tools?

In Informatica interview questions, it is essential to know how it differs from the other ETL tools. Informatica has the biggest range of different standards, systems, and applications. It is designed to be fast, adaptive to the everchanging field of data to the organizations, and the systems. Informatica allows to easily monitor jobs and see what caused the failures in the jobs.

Question 12: Can you describe ‘workflow’ in Informatica?

Workflow manager helps to logically connect tasks to execute code. The final workflow will automatically run all the tasks within it the specified order.

Question 13: Active and passive transformations - what is the difference?

Active transformation can change the number of rows that pass through it. Also, it can change the transaction boundary and can change the actual row type.
Passive transformation does not change rows that pass through it, does not change the row type and transaction boundary.

Question 14: What is the difference between the mapping parameters and variables?

Mapping variables are the values that change during a session’s execution.

Mapping parameters are the values that do not change.

Question 15: How many and what dimensions there are in Informatica?

In Informatica there are three available dimensions: conformed, junk, degenerative.

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Advanced Informatica Interview Questions

A big mistake that a lot of people do is that they think that when their potential employers start asking advanced questions, the employees are going to have to perform complex tasks or create advanced Informatica-based schemas. Truth be told, unless you’re aiming for a raise or trying to get a job at a super high-tier job position, you don't have to worry. Most of the questions for experienced data administrators are very similar to their basic counterparts. The only difference is that they might require you to go a bit more in-depth with your answers, or show that you have used some of the more niche parts of Informatica.

A good way to go about these Informatica interview questions is to try and one-up your answers by adding two or three sentences to further explain a point that you make. This way, you will not only answer the question but will also demonstrate that you are capable of discussing the topic even further. In turn, this might lead to your interviewers thinking that you probably know your stuff, and thus asking fewer questions.

Question 1: What are ‘dimensional tables’?

Dimensional tables are a key feature when it comes to enterprises using Informatica. They are designed to help segment and describe the company’s data in a hierarchical manner, so that it may be easier accessed and understood.

You’re likely to encounter Informatica scenario-based interview questions even when it comes to the advanced questions - keep that in mind!

Question 2: Name a few different methods of how you would implement parallel processing in Informatica.

Truth be told in the Informatica interview questions, there are quite a few methods of how you could do this. It solemnly depends on which of those methods are more acceptable to you and the context of the situation. However, all of these methods are based on data partitioning. Just to give you an example: pass-through, database and Round-Robin partitioning are some of the methods used for the implementation of parallel processing.

Question 3: While dealing with the process of mapping, how would you get distinct values?

First of all, you should choose the fields that you want to be distinct. After that, before inserting data, just add an aggregator by those specific fields.

Question 4: Why could Informatica reject certain files?

One of the more important Informatica interview questions for experienced data administrators, since this isn’t an uncommon scenario to be in.

This happens because Informatica uses DD_REJECT in an update strategy.

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Question 5: How can you filter rows using transformations?

Yet again, this is one of the questions that have a few possible answers. Just to be sure that your potential employers believe in your knowledge on the topic, it’s best that you mention all of these answers.

You can filter the rows in four different ways - by using Source Qualifiers, Filter, Joiner or Router.

Naturally, there are a lot more variations of these questions that your employers could ask you. Naming all of them would be impossible! However, if you study these questions (and their answers) and then try to find follow-ups, you should be good to go.

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Conclusions

Using Informatica efficiently is no easy feat. That’s why multiple different companies are ready to pay a hefty salary and offer great job benefits to administrators who can provide them with professional Informatica data integration and management services. If you study the Informatica interview questions and answers hard and show great motivation during the actual job interview, you can expect to join the ranks of such administrators.

Whether it be simple queries or Informatica scenario-based interview questions - don’t neglect them and try to learn everything possible about Informatica. You never know what your potential employers might ask you - best to come prepared! The questions provided in this tutorial should give you a pretty good idea of what to expect, however.