Search code examples
informaticainformatica-powercenter

Why joiner doesn't have not equal to operator in Informatica?


Why doesn't Informatica's joiner transformation support !=, >=, <= operators?

Why should they come up with a concept like lookup?


Solution

  • Joiner transformation is used for vertical consolidation. e.g

    order-tbl
    order-id, item-id, item-qty
    
    item-tbl
    item-id, item-price, item-desc
    

    Using a join condition on order-tbl.item-id = item-tbl.item-id you could print a report like this

    order-id, item-id, item-price, item-desc
    

    For vertical consolidation, I can't think of a scenerio needing other conditions like !=, >=, <=.

    With lookup transformation, some core ETL tasks are made easy like

    1. identifying if the incoming record is a new record (primary key doesn't exist) or an update to the existing record;

    2. lookup a value e.g. lookup item-price from item-tbl to calculate order total.