07 Feb 2012 Informatica Deployment Groups

Informatica Deployment Groups, simply put, act as containers that allow smart grouping of objects to facilitate the deployment between different folders, repositories and environments. They are objects themselves and they contain specific versioned objects selected for deployment from different source folders. Informatica Deployment Groups can contain folders, mappings, mapplets, reusable transformations, sources, targets, workflows, sessions and tasks and can help transfer these objects into multiple folders across repositories in different domains. The objects contained within a Deployment Group are versioned so the recipient repository will have to be versioned too.

Types of Deployment Groups

The Deployment Groups can be of two types, as the circumstances require it:

Static

• Generally used for one-off objects transfers
• Manually add a specific version of your objects
• Objects are not expected to change until deployment

Dynamic

• Generally used for recurring objects transfers
• Query-driven object list capturing the latest version of frequently updated objects

Creating Dynamic Deployment Groups

As for the creation of Static Deployment Groups the procedure is fairly straight-forward, the Dynamic Deployment Groups require you to follow these steps:

• Define a Label
• Assign Objects to the Label
• Define Query based on the Label
• Define a Dynamic Deployment Group
• Assign Query to Dynamic Deployment Group
• Transfer the Deployment Group

All the steps will be performed with the help of the Repository Manager tool. You will need to build a Label for your objects:

• Find the Labels under the Versioning menu and then Apply the Label to your desired objects
• You may want to enable the label to always use the newest Version of the object
• You should also choose carefully between Labelling all Children or All Parents so that you would cascade-apply the Label to the objects in/directly referenced by your chosen objects
• Global Shortcut Dependencies treat your chosen Global Shortcut objects   In the Versioning menu à Deployment à Groups will enable you to observe existing Deployment Groups.  If required, you can now define a New group and choose between Static or Dynamic
• For the Dynamic Group you can pick a Query which can later be re-edited
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  • When generating a Query for Deployment Groups with mappings and mapplets that contain non-reusable objects, you must use a query condition in addition to specific selection criteria
  • The query must include a condition for Is Reusable and use a qualifier of either Reusable or Non-Reusable
  • Without this qualifier, the deployment may encounter errors if there are non-reusable objects held within the mapping or mapplet

Deploying from the interface will require you to simply drag and drop from the source to the target repository and this will invoke the Deployment Wizard to cover extra steps.  Only when the migration is complete, the history of the Deployment Group is updated and the action is logged for audit. There is also a second option for deployment which involves using the pmrep DeployDeploymentGroup command but you need to provide first an XML control file with information similar to what the Deployment Wizard collected in GUI mode. You can apply a “rollback” on the transferred objects if later required – use the Versioning, Deployment, History, View History, Rollback option.

>Conclusions

Before diving into using the Deployment Groups please take a moment to consider the right approach for your environment. Even if Dynamic Deployment Groups’ reusability is very attractive, it is recommended to first build the complete deployment strategy taking into account the features and shortcomings of the tool and the Deployment Groups.