9 + 1 Reasons to Upgrade to Informatica PowerCenter 9.1

1. Enable true business-IT collaboration
   Empower analysts to directly find data using Business Glossary and define mappings they need from higher-level specifications with the Data Integration Analyst Tool. Analysts can now perform data integration tasks on their own and collaborate with developers for up to 2x combined productivity.
   
2. Simplify Web services development
   Build Web services from WSDL or existing data objects, transformations, and mapplets; handle complex  datatypes; and reuse services much more easily than ever before with the new Data Services Web Services Option.
   
3. Boost productivity with metadata management
   Make changes faster and simpler with with the optimized data lineage and imact analysis of Metadata Manager and Business Glossary.
   
4. Test upgrades up to 10x faster and 10x more with DVO
   Reduce upgrade times up to 10x by automating data testing and validation, and reduce the risk of production issues by increasing data coverage 10x or more with the Informatica PowerCenter Data Validation Option (DVO).
   
5. Minimize risk through data governance
   Implement data governance with Business Glossary, Metadata Manager, and integrated data quality support, now with approval workflow and change notifications for business terms for Business Glossary.
   
6. Improve mainframe access and performance
   Maximize your mainframe investments with access and performance enhancements, including real-time change data capture, VSAM partitioning, and high availability.
   
7. Strengthen your real-time operations
   Take advantage of improvements to PowerCenter Real Time Edition, including real-time change data capture enhancements, even greater Web services scalability, and guaranteed once-only message delivery.
   
8. Reduce deployment and maintenance costs
   Simplify deployment, decrease management overhead, and make troubleshooting much faster with a new administration console that combines several existing consoles into one.
9. Make your security bulletproof
   Secure your data integration environment with centralized user and role administration, enhanced LDAP integration, SSL remote access, and support for Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6).
10. Support mission-critical 24x7 operations
    Access, integrate, and deliver your critical data whenever you need it with enhanced capabilities, including high availability for PowerExchange and dynamic lookup cache for real-time data.

New Features of PowerCenter 9.1

PowerCenter 9.1 delivers the full range of data integration capabilities to ensure that all data can be accessed, integrated, and delivered throughout the enterprise at any speed.

PowerCenter All Editions (Standard, Advanced, Real Time)

• New Informatica Data Integration Analyst, a Web-based UI designed for analysts. It enables analysts to perform data integration tasks on their own and generate mappings for deployment that can be shared with developers.
• New upgrade wizard and installer
• New unified administration console
• Improvements to Mapping Architects for Visio, including support for PowerExchange data sources, transformation shortcuts, and custom transformation editing
• Enhanced support for lookup transformations, including cache updates, database deadlock resilience, SQL overrides for uncached lookups, and multiple rows return
• Guaranteed one-time semantics extended to SQL transforms, allowing recovery of interrupted message without requiring message to be sent again
• Centralized user and role administration, enhanced LDAP integration, SSL remote access, and support for Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6)

PowerCenter Advanced Edition: Metadata Manager and Business Glossary

• Built-in support of Business Glossary within Data Integration Analyst, including search, browsing, and authoring, for improved productivity and data governance by reuse of recommended data sources
• Enhanced graphical end-to-end lineage in Metadata Manager and Business Glossary from more sources to more targets across transformations
• Improved impact analysis, with ability to view list of impacted objects and limit analysis to a single domain
• Approval workflow for business terms—from creation and review to publication Business terms change notifications to stakeholders via emails, asking users to review draft  or make comments
• Ability to import/export Business Glossary
• Metadata audit trails for all user-definable metadata, with ability to view history of changes to business glossary categories, business terms, and custom objects
• Improvements to metadata bookmarks, including access to Metadata Manager and Business Glossary objects and features from external applications
• Enhancements to metadata loading and linking processes, including incremental loading on select sources and targets, automatic connection assignments, support for multiple PowerCenter parameter files, automated cross-resource linking, and resource connection testing
• Support for Microsoft SSRS/SSAS metadata

PowerCenter Real Time Edition

• New Data Services Web Services Option—faster Web services creation from WSDL or existing data objects, transformations, mapplets, and hierarchical datatypes and easier service reuse
• Improved XML exception management—validate and route invalid XML to a separate output group
• Dynamic lookup cache refresh—update the lookup cache based on the results of an expression
• Session log file rotation—limit the size of session logs for real-time sessions by time or file size

Compare and Upgrade: PowerCenter 8.5 vs. 8.6 vs. 9.1

If you’re using any edition of PowerCenter version 8.x, you’re really missing out. PowerCenter 9.1 is packed with ground-breaking new and enhanced features and capabilities that will utterly transform your IT organization.