Is there a way to export/derive Informatica definitions to OBIEE RPD

User_F4K7G

OWB has the utility to derive obiee repository which creates all three layers in rpd. I am searching for any integration which can help to generate rpd file with all three layers using informatica data model.

Gianni Ceresa

You can search for long, you will not find one.

First of all, Informatica is an ETL, it does transform data. I doubt you want to do the same data transformations in the RPD, so at the best you can look to have your final data objects (tables) into the RPD. Still, Informatica will not be able to provide any info on how these tables connect (measures, dimensions), about hierarchies, about measures.

The Admintool has a wizard to import database objects and build the Physical layer. If your database is well designed, the physical joins will also be imported and will be correct. But from there to the business layer it is a different story...

The only product which had Informatica ETL and a fully designed ETL is OBIA 7.9, but that's a whole different product (set of products to be precise).

User_F4K7G

Hi @Gianni Ceresa ,

Thank you for quick response. I had previously worked on OWB which is also an ETL tool and it provides Derive capability which in turn creates three layers even dimension hierarchy drill downs. I was just wondering if there is any integration in informatica or erwin data modelling. Since if data modelling of semantic layer is done in erWin then there should be some integration to avoid rework.

Regards,

Waqas

Gianni Ceresa

Technically you can write an integration if that's your target. The RPD is a single binary file, but still there are way to generate RPD content (the easier one is by using the XML format of the RPD).

But I'm not aware of anything widely used. Maybe somebody sell a tool for the job, but definitely not something widely used and known.

Christian Berg-Oracle

To add a more general aspect to this thread:

Even if this existed, it wouldn't be really in the spirit of the Oracle Analytics platform. The RPDs are not meant to be 1:1 representations of the physical layer as Oracle Analytics isn't an uninterpreted visualization tool like other competitors who force every logic into the viz layer to be repeated over and over and over.

The point of the RPD is to provide a common semantic layer across all kinds and types of data from any source imaginable. It's there to unify and create a coherent access layer to information - no matter where that information comes from, how it is structured, stored or refreshed. The user should never have to think about "Where does this attribute come from" even if an analysis showing 2 facts and 5 attributes uses in reality 2 databases with 29 tables, 4 Essbase cubes, a real-time Oracle EBS, a real-time SAP connection and a Hadoop storage to produce that data set.

Also using that approach is extremely limiting to say the least. What if Informatica stores the target data in a form that is not explicitly built for analysis? What if it's a data lake where nothing is modeled and tables can play any role? Fact or dimension and both of those in several variations?

OWB may have had this capability , but OWB is long dead. Modern tools aren't built to provide one solution for one problem anymore. They are built to provide models and patterns of solutions to questions you haven't even thought of yet today.