1. How many transformations?

17 - 18

2. Any transformations in 6.0 and 6.2 not in 5.1.

i. Sorter transformation
3. Differences between 5.1 and 6.X.
i. Dynamic caching, Server manager is replaced by workflow
manager and workflow monitor.

4. What kind of reusability you have in your projects.

i. Mapplets and reusable transformation

5. IMPORTANT Lookup transformation and their caching schemes

i. Refer to transformation guide

6. Dynamic caching
i. Refer to transformation guide

The Integration Service builds the cache when it processes the first lookup request. It
queries the cache based on the lookup condition for each row that passes into the
transformation. When you use a dynamic cache, the Integration Service updates the
lookup cache as it passes rows to the target.

7. Difference between OLTP and OLAP

OLTP databases provide real time accesses to its data which is being updated by
other transactions
OLAP provides analytical processing capabilities on an OLTP database. This
provides a real time analytical view of the database

OLTP

Current data
Short database transactions
Online update/insert/delete
Normalization is promoted
High volume transactions
Transaction recovery is necessary

OLAP
Current and historical data
Long database transactions
Batch update/insert/delete
Denormalization is promoted
Low volume transactions
Transaction recovery is not necessary

Data Warehouses contain historic & non operational data that is not required for day
to day working of the operations. For example you purchased a pair of Shoes from a
branded store 10 years ago. Chances that you will come back reclaiming your money
are very less ;-).

Such data is transferred to special database known as Warehouse. If it would have

being in the OLTP database then it would have consumed storage and WORSE will
make transaction processing very very slow. Since best database algo’s are log(n)
where n is the amount of data. As ‘n’ grows so is the time complexity.

Hence it makes sense to keep such historic data separate for analysis purposes.

8. What are different types of schemas?

9. Explain them- star schema, snow flake schema, where you used them, scenario.

10. How do you implement error handling?

i. In pre-session and post-session tasks include email if errors.

11. Stages in data ware housing project. (In your last project)

12. What is the size of your data warehouse? 600 gb, biggest is fact table.

13. Star schema – how many fact tables, how many dimension tables.

14. PL/SQL questions if crazy: Error handling in PL/SQL.

15. Have you used re-usability in your design?

16. Have you designed aggregates?

a. Where was aggregation done;
1. With in the dbms, in a UNIX box or using a 3rd party tool.
17. Explain recursive Data Warehousing process.

18. Explain Informatica Architecture.

19. Architecture of your project.

20. What did you do in data modeling? Reverse Egg/ Forward Egg

21. Problems with Teradata (like you faced any problems when loading into data.)

22. Did you use Informatica or some other tool to create cubes?

23. How did you pull data from data base to Cognos catalog?

24. What did you use surrogate keys for?

25. Which is faster? Adding a record to a dimension table or to a fact table.

26. Did you have any confirmed dimensions

27. Difference between shortcut & copy.

28. Various permissions available for using different tools.

29. How did you use the debugger

30. Slowly changing dimension. – 3 types

i. Refer Kimball book

31. Did you use normalizer? How?

i. If the source is COBOL copy book or redundant source, then we
use normalizer.
32. You load fact table or dimension table first? Why
33. Ans: Dimension first. Because, they have primary keys and fact table have
foreign keys.

34. What is a pivoting?

i. Changing rows to columns and columns to rows.

35. What are schedulers?

i. Korn scripts and shell scripts are used as scheduler

36. Where do you use PMCMD?

i. In real situation there may not be workflow manager. We use
PMCMD to invoke workflow.

37. Where mapping variables and parameters are used?

i. Parameters are fixed constant values for a session, and variable can
be changed in a session.

38. What is your most complex mapping?

39. What is incremental aggregation? Where do you use it?

40. How do you load time dimension?

41. What is a data-warehouse?

42. What are Data Marts?

43. What is ER Diagram?

44. What is a Star Schema?

45. What is Dimensional Modeling?

46. What Snow Flake Schema?

47. What are the Different methods of loading Dimension tables?

48. What are Aggregate tables?

49. What is the Difference between OLTP and OLAP?

50. What is ETL?

51. What are the various ETL tools in the Market?

52. What are the various Reporting tools in the Market?

53. What is Fact table?

54. What is a dimension table?

55. What is a lookup table?

56. What is a general purpose scheduling tool? Name some of them?

57. What are modeling tools available in the Market? Name some of them?

58. What is real time data-warehousing?

59. What is data mining?

60. What is Normalization? First Normal Form, Second Normal Form , Third

61. Normal Form?

62. What is ODS?

63. What type of Indexing mechanism do we need to use for a typical

data warehouse?

64. Which columns go to the fact table and which columns go the
dimension table?
(My user needs to see <data element> <data element> broken by
<data element> <data element>

All elements before broken = Fact Measures

All elements after broken = Dimension Elements

65. What is a level of Granularity of a fact table? What does this

signify?

(Weekly level summarization there is no need to have Invoice

Number in the fact table anymore)

66. How are the Dimension tables designed?

De-Normalized, Wide, Short, Use Surrogate Keys, Contain
Additional date fields and flags.

67. What are slowly changing dimensions?

68. What are non-additive facts? (Inventory , Account balances in bank)

69. What are conformed dimensions?

70. What is VLDB? (Data base is too large to back up in a time frame
then it's a VLDB)

71. What are SCD1, SCD2, and SCD3?

ETL Questions:
72. What is a staging area? Do we need it? What is the purpose of a
staging area?

73. What is a three tier data warehouse?

74. What are the various methods of getting incremental records or delta
records from the source systems?

75. What are the various tools? - Name a few

76. What is latest version of Power Center / Power Mart?

77. What is the difference between Power Center & Power Mart?

78. What are the various transformations available?

79. What are the modules in Power Mart?

80. What are active transformation / Passive transformations?

81. What are the different Lookup methods used in Informatica?

82. Can Informatica load heterogeneous targets from heterogeneous

sources?

83. How do we call shell scripts from Informatica?

84. What is Informatica Metadata and where is it stored?

85. What is a mapping, session, Worklets, workflow, Mapplet?

86. How can we use mapping variables in Informatica? Where do we use

them?
87. What are parameter files? Where do we use them?

88. Can we override a native sql query within Informatica? Where do we

do it? How do we do it?

89. Can we use procedural logic inside Infromatica? If yes how , if now
how can we use external procedural logic in informatica?

90. Do we need an ETL tool? When do we go for the tools in the market?

91. How do we extract SAP data Using Informatica? What is ABAP? What are
IDOCS?

92. How to determine what records to extract?

* Timestamps
* Deletes are logical with time stamped deletes
* Triggers on source system tables (Generally we dont do this as
this decreases the source system efficiency)
* Application Integration Software TIBCO , MQSERIES
* File Compares (least method)
* Snapshots in Oracle(daily)
* Oracle Streams

93. What is Full load & Incremental or Refresh load?

94. Techniques of Error Handling - Ignore , Rejecting bad records to a

flat file , loading the records and reviewing them (default values)

95. What are snapshots? What are materialized views & where do we use
them? What is a materialized view log?

96. What is partitioning? What are the types of partitioning?

97. When do we Analyze the tables? How do we do it?

98. Compare ETL & Manual development?

Business Intelligence:

99. What is Business Intelligence?

100. What is OLAP?

101. What is OLAP, MOLAP, ROLAP, DOLAP, HOLAP? Examples?

ROLAP = relationnal olap, the users see cubes but under the hood it is
pure relationnal table, Micro-Strategy is a rolap product
MOLAP = multi dimensionnal olap, the users see cubes and under the hood
there a big cube, Oracle Express used to be a molap product
DOLAP = Desktop olap, the users see many cubes and under the hood there
are many small cubes, Cognos PowerPlay.
HOLAP = hybryd olap, combines molap and rolap, Essbase

102. Name some of the standard Business Intelligence tools in the market?

103. What are the various modules in Business Objects product Suite?

104. What is a Universe?

105. What is BAS? What is the function ?

106. How do we enhance the functionality of the reports in BO? (VBA??)

107. Tell me about yourself.

108. 7- 8 min presentation
109. talk about your last project
110. Tell about Informatica, versions, performance tunning.
111. What sources u used
112. Target data bases
113. General questions: How many team members? What is your
responsibility?