6 months ago I got my new Dell 1555 laptop with Windows Vista. I never wished I would use Vista after reading its reviews about bad resource consumption and performance complaints in many places. But my experience using Vista was not that bad, I enjoyed its look and feel, with some simple & cool features (like address bar, search just to name a few). And when it comes to performance it is not worried some on my machine with Intel Core Duo T6400 3 GHz and 4 G RAM.

However the major drawback I personally felt with Vista is its compatibility with many software especially in the midst of its reviews there is even no hope that software vendors put any efforts to release Vista compatible packages. Most of the software in BI space are not compatible on Vista. So, I dared to use virtual machine with XP on it so that I can do my works. But the performance of VM was really bad, and I could not do any work on it - it spoiled both host and guests. It has been more than 1 month that I did not run VM at least once :(.

Yesterday, I was browsing Oracle.com and noticed Oracle 10g for Vista is available for download - don't know since when it was there, but my bad I did not notice it until yesterday. I downloaded and installed it - cool, it's working. And then I started trying with Informatica 7.1. I know it is not compatible on Vista, but kept trying resolving entire issues one after other, and finally Informatica 7.1 on Vista - it worked!

I got some strange errors like a few below while I was trying installation. Most of the part is just same as it was on XP when I did last time. Entire credit should go to Vista! Yes, truly. Though Informatica 7.1 does not have any compatibility, Vista has opened its windows to host this software with its amazing "Compatibility" feature.

Here are the steps...
Create a database user (repo/repo@orcl) with necessary privileges like Create Session, Create table etc... – This user is required for holding the Informatica repository objects (will be used in the steps explained below).

Steps below are for configuring Informatica 7.1 on Windows Vista:

1. Run Launch.exe in compatibility mode (Windows XP)
2. After installation (Product License Key is required)
3. Setup Repository and Informatica servers (steps below)
         a. Informatica Repository Server Setup - with defaults unchanged, give password for Administrator
         b. Informatica Server Setup –
                  i. Give Informatica server name (INFA_SERVER) and hostname (localhost) in Server tab
                 ii. Give Repository name (REP_SERVER), repository user (Administrator - pwd for this user comes from step 3a), repository hostname (localhost) in Repository tab
                iii. Add licences in Licenses tab (not required to add Product License, but others like Connectiviy, Partitioning etc).
4. Go to Windows Services and start "Informatica Repository Server" service (PmRepServer) – this uses details entered in 3a.
5. Open “Repository Server Administrator Console”
        a. Right click on "Informatica Repository Servers" and click "New Server Registration"
        b. Enter the hostname given in step 3b in Repository tab (localhost).
        c. Above entered hostname will appear in the server list. Right click on the entered hostname and click "Connect"
        d. Enter the administrator password given in step 3a
        e. Right click on the folder called "Repositories" and click "New Repository"
                   i. Enter the repository server name that is entered in step 3b in General tab (not required to choose Global Repository check box)
                  ii. Enter database details (DBUser, DBPassword, ConnetString) in Database Connection tab.
                 iii. Add the licences, including product license in Licenses tab
                 iv. Click Ok - this will start creating the repository tables in the database location specified above.
6. Go to Windows Services and start “Informatica” service (Powermart) – this uses details entered in 3b.
7. Open "Repository Manager" and connect to repository (REP_SERVER) using Administrator and its password
8. To create additional user (recommended), go to "Security" menu and click "Manage Users and Privileges" and add a user.
9. Create a folder - go to "Folder" menu item and create. Change owner of folder to the user created in above step
10. Go to Workflow Manager (Run as Administrator) and login with Administrator and click "Server Configuration" under "Server" menu
         a. Add New server - give server name and hostname as given in step 3b (INFA_SERVER, hostname), and set "$PMRootDir" in server variables list (C:\Program Files\Informatica PowerCenter 7.1.1\Server). This server will be assigned to a workflow or session when before it has to run.

As I said, very few steps are different in installation on Vista compared to XP.
        • For Vista, it's required to install Informatica (Launch.exe) in XP compatibility mode (as Informatica and Vista are not compatible) and
        • Run the client applications (Designer, Workflow Manager, probably Monitor as well) as "Run as Administrator".

Below picture lists the files that will be created under "C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Informatica PowerCenter 7.1.1" post installation of Informatica 7.1 (after Step 2)


Hope it helps!

I have been working on 8.6 for quite a long time, but never tried setting it up. I am planning that soon, if possible in the next week, with a post collecting my experiences.

Karteek