Using the Informatica PowerCenter Connector for Vertica

Posted November 5, 2015 by BD_Partner_Eng

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Have you been using the plug-in (Java or Native) that was developed to connect to your Vertica database using Informatica PowerCenter? Now there’s a better option that provides additional functionality.

Earlier this year, Informatica developed and released PowerExchange (PWX) for Vertica with PowerCenter 9.6.1 HotFix 2 and later.

This connector uses the Vertica ODBC driver to write large amounts of data to a Vertica database. Informatica made sure to retain all the functionality that the Plug-In has, and in addition, included other major features, including:

  • Bulk mode or relational mode for processing Vertica data
  • Enhanced design-time features
  • Additional run-time capabilities
  • Support for PWX session-level partitioning
  • SQL transformation
  • Lookup (cached and uncached) transformation supported
  • Connection resiliency
  • SQL pushdown optimization, including pushing transformation logic

For best results,use this new connector when connecting from Informatica to Vertica.

Vertica recently published two articles in our Developer Community Vertica Knowledge base that provides details about these features, and how to use them to optimize your experience connecting from Informatica to Vertica.

Vertica Integration with Informatica: Connection Guide: This document contains detailed instructions on how to configure PowerCenter to connect to Vertica and how to make the connection. You can learn how to create mappings and workflow and understand the three types of pushdown optimization.

Vertica Integration with Informatica: Tips and Techniques: This document contains tips for getting the best performance using PowerCenter with Vertica. You will learn when to use bulk mode and relational mode for writing to Vertica, how to improve read and writes with session-level partitioning, and how to tune memory settings and the commit interval. It provides the steps for migrating mappings and workflow from the Vertica Plug-In for Informatica for use in the new PowerCenter Connector for Vertica.