Informatica PowerCenter is an ETL tool used for extracting data from source and apply some transformation rules on the source data and load it to the target system.

Indirect file load in informatica is an option used to load the data from multiple source files that have the same structure and properties. Integration service reads the source file sequentially and then loads the data into the target. Indirect file load is applicable only when we have Flat file as a source. Only text file (.txt) is supported as a Flat file.

For better understanding of indirect file load let us take a scenario:

In an organization, having several branch offices, the employee data for each of the branch is stored in a separate employee file. These files have the same structure and same properties, and we want to load all these files into a single target. Creating a mapping for each source file will be a tedious process. Informatica provides an easy option of Indirect file load to handle this type of scenario.

 

 

 

The Process involved in specifying the indirect file load options are :

Creating a list file
Configuring the file properties in session.

Implementation of Indirect file load

Step 1: Create a list file (emp_list.txt) which consist names of all other source files i.e., emp_a.txt, emp_b.txt, emp_c.txt, emp_d.txt

Step 2: After Importing the source in designer, kindly enable the port of Add Currently Processed Flat File Name port.

Step 3: After creating workflow, kindly change the session properties of Source i.e., Source filetype to Indirect.

Step 4: In session while providing source filename kindly provide the file list i.e., emp_list.txt

Step 5: While creating the target kindly add one more column i.e., FileName this will provide from which file the data has been imported.

In this way we have successfully achieved indirect file load in Informatica PowerCentre.

 

Happy Reading!!