Leveraging Integration Templates in Informatica Cloud

Challenge

An integration template, otherwise known as a Visio template, is a legacy feature in the Informatica Cloud. These templates provide parameterized data flow logic that can be used in mapping tasks, allowing customers and partners to build and share full-scale integration apps on-demand. Integration templates are not supported in Data Integration by default, but access may be acquired through Global Customer Support.

Although integration templates may be leveraged, Informatica strongly recommends using mapping and mapping task templates native to the Cloud Integration application instead. These pre-defined assets in the Informatica Cloud provide a framework for users to accelerate towards meeting their data integration, cleansing, and warehousing goals. They provide pre-built logic that jumpstarts the development of core processes needed to move data and they are reusable and customizable, allowing customers and partners alike to enhance solutions beyond out-of-the-box functionality.

Description

Prerequisites for Working with Integration Templates

• An Integration Templates license for the Informatica Cloud Org
• MS Visio 2010 32-bit
• Informatica Cloud Integration Template Designer plug-in for Visio
• An understanding of PowerCenter mappings and transformations

Utilizing Integration Templates in the Informatica Cloud

Below is the high-level process to create and use integration templates:

• Create a mapping template using the Informatica Cloud Integration Template Designer (the Data Integration plug-in for Visio).
• Validate and publish the mapping template as an XML metadata file using the Cloud Integration Template Designer.
• Use the published template XML file to create an integration template in your Cloud organization.
• Use the integration template to create a mapping task.

Use Cases for Integration Templates

The following are major drivers for when to use Integration Templates:

• Reading multiple source objects that cannot be natively joined and they require a Joiner transformation.
• Writing to multiple targets.
• Advanced transformations such as Rank, Sorter, Sequence Generator, Transaction Control, Union, Stored Procedure, Normalizer, and Custom Transformation.
• Multi-path data flow logic.
• Reuse of common integration patterns such as pivot, standardization, conversion, and error handling.
• Macro based repetitive expression generation when working with large numbers of columns and repeatable transformation rules.
• Incorporating advanced Mapplets developed in PowerCenter.

Reasons to Use Native Data Integration Mapping Templates

Although integration templates may be leveraged to meet customer use cases, Informatica recommends using mapping and task templates in the Cloud Integration application to provide greater agility in development as well as ease of maintenance.

The templates native to the Cloud Integration application are pre-built with common logic, providing customers and partners with a means to reduce steps in the development process. With these native, user-friendly templates, users can shorten the time needed to create assets essential to data integration, cleansing, or warehousing needs. Users can either use the templates as-is or create a copy of a template to add additional, customized logic to better accomplish data management goals. Cloud Data Integration provides all the customization functionality that the integration templates can support.

In addition to the agility these native, pre-built assets provide, the mapping and task templates in the Data Integration application are easier to maintain. Because Integration templates requiring separate plug-ins and applications, there is a greater opportunity to run into roadblocks during upgrades and development efforts that can be more difficult to handle. There are not only more moving parts to leveraging Integration templates, they are also a legacy offering. With Informatica direction towards ‘Cloud First, Cloud Native’, Integration templates are no longer supported by default.