Repository: This is where all the metadata information is stored in the Informatica suite. The Power Center Client and the Repository Server would access this repository to retrieve, store and manage metadata.
Power Center Client: Informatica client is used for managing users, identifying source and target systems definitions, creating mapping and mapplets, creating sessions and run workflows etc.
Repository Server: This repository server takes care of all the connections between the repository and the Power Center Client.
Power Center Server: Power Center server does the extraction from source and then loading data into targets.
Designer: Source Analyzer, Mapping Designer and Warehouse Designer are tools reside within the Designer wizard. Source Analyzer is used for extracting metadata from source systems.
Mapping Designer is used to create mapping between sources and targets. Mapping is a pictorial representation about the flow of data from source to target.
Warehouse Designer is used for extracting metadata from target systems or metadata can be created in the Designer itself.
Data Cleansing: The PowerCenter's data cleansing technology improves data quality by validating, correctly naming and standardization of address data. A person's address may not be same in all source systems because of typos and postal code, city name may not match with address. These errors can be corrected by using data cleansing process and standardized data can be loaded in target systems (data warehouse).
Transformation: Transformations help to transform the source data according to the requirements of target system. Sorting, Filtering, Aggregation, Joining are some of the examples of transformation. Transformations ensure the quality of the data being loaded into target and this is done during the mapping process from source to target.
Workflow Manager: Workflow helps to load the data from source to target in a sequential manner. For example, if the fact tables are loaded before the lookup tables, then the target system will pop up an error message since the fact table is violating the foreign key validation. To avoid this, workflows can be created to ensure the correct flow of data from source to target.
Workflow Monitor: This monitor is helpful in monitoring and tracking the workflows created in each Power Center Server.
Power Center Connect: This component helps to extract data and metadata from ERP systems like IBM's MQSeries, Peoplesoft, SAP, Siebel etc. and other third party applications.
Power Center Exchange: This component helps to extract data and metadata from ERP systems like IBM's MQSeries, Peoplesoft, SAP, Siebel etc. and other third party applications.
Power Exchange: Informatica Power Exchange as a stand alone service or along with Power Center, helps organizations leverage data by avoiding manual coding of data extraction programs. Power Exchange supports batch, real time and changed data capture options in main frame(DB2, VSAM, IMS etc.,), mid range (AS400 DB2 etc.,), and for relational databases (oracle, sql server, db2 etc) and flat files in unix, linux and windows systems.
Power Channel: This helps to transfer large amount of encrypted and compressed data over LAN, WAN, through Firewalls, tranfer files over FTP, etc.
Meta Data Exchange: It enables organizations to take advantage of the time and effort already invested in defining data structures within their IT environment when used with Power Center. For example, an organization may be using data modeling tools, such as Erwin, Embarcadero, Oracle designer, Sybase Power Designer etc for developing data models. Functional and technical team should have spent much time and effort in creating the data model's data structures(tables, columns, data types, procedures, functions, triggers etc). By using meta deta exchange, these data structures can be imported into power center to identifiy source and target mappings which leverages time and effort. There is no need for informatica developer to create these data structures once again.
Power Analyzer: It provides organizations with reporting facilities. PowerAnalyzer makes accessing, analyzing, and sharing enterprise data simple and easily available to decision makers. PowerAnalyzer enables to gain insight into business processes and develop business intelligence.
With PowerAnalyzer, an organization can extract, filter, format, and analyze corporate information from data stored in a data warehouse, data mart, operational data store, or otherdata storage models. PowerAnalyzer is best with a dimensional data warehouse in a relational database. It can also run reports on data in any table in a relational database that do not conform to the dimensional model.
Super Glue:
Superglue is used for loading metadata in a centralized place from several sources. Reports can be run against this superglue to analyze meta data. Power Mart:
Power Mart is a departmental version of Informatica for building, deploying, and managing data warehouses and data marts. Power center is used for corporate enterprise data warehouse and power mart is used for departmental data warehouses like data marts. Power Center supports global repositories and networked repositories and it can be connected to several sources. Power Mart supports single repository and it can be connected to fewer sources when compared to Power Center. Power Mart can extensibily grow to an enterprise implementation and it is easy for developer productivity through a codeless environment. 