We started the chapter with the debugger, which helps you debug the errors in your mapping. Using the debugger, you can pinpoint the error in your mapping using which you can easily resolve issues. Next, we discussed the reusable transformation that allows you to reuse the transformation across mappings. Reusable transformations are very important, as they save the time and effort required to recreate the same transformations.

Moving on, we talked about mapplets, which allow you to reuse groups of transformations that make your mapping simpler by replacing multiple transformations with a single component. Also, mapplets save your time and effort by allowing you to reuse existing components. Next in the line was the target load plan using which you can set the priority of loading the target tables in a single mapping. This is useful while loading the data and maintaining the constraints. We also saw some details about the parameters and variables that we will discuss in more details in Chapter 5, Using the Workflow Manager Screen – Advanced. We finished the chapter by comparing the objects functionality, which allows you to compare two components, which is very helpful in understanding and maintaining the versions on the repository.

With this, we have seen all the basic and advanced topics on the Informatica PowerCenter Designer screen. The more you practice, the better you will get at building your logic. As you must understand by now, practice is the only option if you wish to gain expertise and understand the nuances of the Informatica PowerCenter tool.

In the next chapter, we will take our discussion to a very important data warehousing concept, that is, Slowly Changing Dimensions (SCD). We will use the wizard feature that is available on designer screens in order to understand the different types of SCDs that are available.