Informatica PowerCenter OCF Connector: Overview

Alation Cloud Service Applies to Alation Cloud Service instances of Alation

Customer Managed Applies to customer-managed instances of Alation

The OCF connector for Informatica PowerCenter is available as a Zip file from Alation’s Connector Hub (requires a login via the Alation Customer Portal). The connector file can be uploaded and installed in the Alation application. The connector is compiled together with the required database driver, so no additional effort is needed to procure and install the driver.

This connector should be used to catalog Informatica PowerCenter as a data source on Alation on-premise and Cloud Service instances. It supports to catalog Informatica PowerCenter metadata for the following data sources:

  • Oracle

  • SQL Server

The following data sources and targets are supported by this connector:

  • SQL Server

  • Oracle

  • PostgreSQL

  • Amazon Redshift (only target)

  • Snowflake (only target)

It extracts and catalogs such database objects as mappings, workflows, transformations, transformation fields expressions, and conditions. This connector also extracts source and target schema, tables, columns, datatypes used in mappings, database or data source information like host and port, and qualified hostname for source and target tables. After the metadata is extracted, it is represented in the data catalog as a hierarchy of catalog pages under the parent data source. Alation users can leverage the full catalog functionality to search for and find the extracted metadata, curate the corresponding catalog pages, create documentation about the data source, and exchange information.

Team

The following administrators are required to install this connector:

  • Informatica PowerCenter administrator:

    • Creates a Oracle or SQL Server service account with the required privileges to extract metadata.

    • Provides the connection information.

    • Provides the authentication information and assists in configuring the authentication.

  • Alation administrator:

    • Ensures that Alation Connector Manager is installed and running or installs it.

    • Installs the connector.

    • Creates and configures a Informatica PowerCenter data source in the catalog.

    • Performs initial extraction and prepares the data source for Alation users.

Scope

The table below lists the features supported by the connector.

Feature

Scope

Availability

Authentication

Basic

Authentication with a service account created on the database using username, password, and Bootstrap server

Yes

SSL

Connection over the TLS protocol

No

Key pair authentication

Authentication with the private-public key pair

No

OAuth

Authentication with the OAuth 2.0 protocol

No

SSO

Authentication using an SSO flow through an IdP application

No

Kerberos

Authentication using Kerberos

No

Metadata Extraction (MDE)

Default MDE

Extraction of metadata based on the JDBC driver methods in the connector code

Yes

Custom query-based MDE

Extraction of metadata based on extraction queries provided by a user

No

Extracted metadata objects

Schemas

List of schemas

Yes

Tables

List of tables

Yes

Columns

List of columns

Yes

Column data types

Column data types

Yes

Views

List of views including materialized views, secure views, and secure materialized views

Yes

Source comments

Source comments

No

Primary keys

Primary key information for extracted tables

NO

Foreign keys

Foreign key information for extracted tables

No

External tables

Extraction of external table metadata

No

Stored procedures

Stored procedure metadata will appear in search results

No

Functions

Extraction of function metadata

No

Function definitions

Extraction of function definition metadata

No

Tags

Extraction of tags

No

Policies

Extraction of row access policies and data masking policies. Policy information will be available if Policy Center is enabled in the Governance app.

No

Sampling and Profiling

Not supported

Query Log Ingestion (QLI)

Not supported

Lineage

Table-level lineage

Auto-calculation of lineage based on query history ingested from MDE

Yes

Column-level lineage

Calculation of lineage data at the column level

Yes*

Cross-system lineage

Show lineage between your data source and BI sources that use its data.

Yes

Compose

Not supported

* Column-level lineage is not supported for Amazon Redshift.

Object Mapping

The following table shows how extracted Informatica PowerCenter objects map onto Alation objects:

Informatica PowerCenter Objects

Alation Objects

Mapping or Workflow

Schema

Transformations

Table

Transformation fields

Column

Connectivity between transformations

Table level lineage

Connectivity between transformation fields

Column level lineage

Source and target tables or columns used in transformations.

Cross-system lineage between transformation or transformation fields in Informatica PowerCenter and tables or columns in the scanned data source in Alation.

Transformation expressions and conditions

Dataflow content

Subject area

Schema filter