APEAR - A tool for automating Informatica Performance Tuning

DWBIConcepts is launching APEAR – an Automated Performance Evaluation and Reporting tool for

Informatica. As the name suggests, this tool will help you tune the performance of Informatica sessions

fully automatically. Now don't waste your precious time any longer trying to figure out how to speed up

your Informatica sessions.

Overview of APEAR

APEAR is a UNIX bash shell based tool that is capable of analyzing Informatica PowerCenter session logs

and generate reports containing suggestions to improve session performance. The tool is FREE and tested

with Informatica PowerCenter 8.5/8.6.

What does this tool do?

APEAR analyzes the informatica session log files and calculates and derives crucial performance insights

from the log. Next APEAR uses this insight to suggest solutions or improvement points to augment the

session performance and displays the suggestions in a nifty looking report. All these are done with zero

manual intervention.

How can APEAR automate Informatica performance tuning?

APEAR uses a lot of calculation and heuristics (e.g. statistical deviations from normal distribution to

identify query performance issue, etc.) and utilizes the generally accepted best practice guideline to

suggest solutions.

In which platform APEAR runs?

APEAR needs Linux/Unix platform with bash shell

How does an APEAR report look like?

Please see a sample APEAR report below

AUTOMATED PERFORMANCE REPORTING FOR INFORMATICA MAPPING: m_3NF_GEN_DATA_LOAD_MAP_FINAL

PARTITION POINT | STAGE |BUSY% |COMMENT
---------------------------------------|------------------|-----------|---------------
------
[SQ_DWH_DATA_LOAD_MAP_TEMP] |read |4.599 |
[SQ_DWH_DATA_LOAD_MAP_TEMP] |transformation |94.31 |Possible
Bottle-neck
[DWH_DATA_LOAD_MAP_SNDWHTEMP1, |write |11.18 |

LOOKUP |DTM BUFF|DTM BLCK| DCACHE | ICACHE |ROW(S) |QTIME |CTIME |TTIME
|TP% |DATA MEM |INDX MEM |FLAG
---------------|--------|--------|--------|--------|----------|------|------|------|--
--|---------|---------|----
LKP_DWH_DUMMY1 |609824 |65536 |14917632|7459200 |30 |0 |0 |0 |-
| | |
LKP_DWH_DUMMY2 |609824 |65536 |14917632|7459200 |285175 |1 |1 |1
|2.85| | |
LKP_DWH_DUMMY3 |609824 |65536 |14917632|7459200 |9528 |0 |0 |0 |-
| | |
LKP_DWH_DUMMY4 |609824 |65536 |14917632|7459200 |4853279 |87 |33 |87
|.55 |310624256|85828400 |PQ
LKP_SUB_DUMMY5 |609824 |65536 |14917632|7459200 |31449562 |410 |231 |410
|.76 |505167872|897080800|P
LKP_DWH_DUMMY6 |609824 |65536 |14917632|7458000 |792928 |3 |2 |3
|2.64|19062784 |35604800 |P
LKP_DWH_DUMMY7 |609824 |65536 |14917632|7459200 |129239 |2 |1 |2
|.64 |18915328 |3698800 |DQ
LKP_DWH_DUMMY8 |609824 |65536 |14917632|7458000 |1629778 |6 |3 |6
|2.71|39165952 |73185200 |P
ULKP_DWH_DUMMY9|609824 |65536 |14917632|7459200 |258 |0 |0 |0 |-
| | |
LKP_DWH_DUMMY10|609824 |65536 |14917632|7458000 |1950112 |10 |6 |10
|1.95|46858240 |87564400 |P
---------------|--------|--------|--------|--------|----------|------|------|------|--
--|---------|---------|----

TP% : Relative through-put of the lookup (1 mil rows/sec equals TP%=10)

FLAG: U- Unsorted Input, Q- Query may need tuning, P- Disk paging for Data and Index,
D- Paging for data

SUGGESTION(s)

1. LKP_DWH_DUMMY4: Not enough memory, data and index cache may page out.
[4853279] rows(of avg. len 64.00) needs 310624256(data) + 85828400(index) bytes of
memory.
But it has 14917632 and 7459200 bytes respectively. You can increase memory from
Properties
2. LKP_SUB_DUMMY5: Not enough memory, data and index cache may page out.
[31449562] rows(of avg. len 160.62) needs 5051678720(data) + 897080800(index) bytes of
memory.
But it has 14917632 and 7459200 bytes respectively. You can increase memory from
Properties
3. LKP_DWH_DUMMY7: Not enough memory, data cache may page-out to disk.
[129239] rows (avg. row len 146.35) needs 18915328 bytes of memory but it has 14917632
bytes
You can increase memory from Properties settings
4. Possible bottleneck at partition point [SQ_DWH_DATA_LOAD_MAP_TEMP]
5. The lookup sql query of [LKP_DWH_DUMMY4] may need some tuning
6. The lookup sql query of [LKP_DWH_DUMMY7] may need some tuning

How can I download APEAR?

APEAR source code is freely downloadable from this website. Since this is basically a shell script, the code

can be directly executed in UNIX bash.

Version Description Link

APEAR1.0 Initial Release Download

How to run/use APEAR?

APEAR can be executed by following the below simple steps:

1. Download the latest version of APEAR from the download link given above

2. Place the downloaded zip file in your UNIX/Linux server, preferably in the same server where

Informatica is installed
3. Unzip the zip file using "unzip -j " command. This will create a .bsh file in the working directory

$>unzip -j APEAR.zip

4. Execute the .bsh file from the command prompt and pass the full-path and name of the session
log file for the session that you want to tune. See below
 5. $>chmod +x APEAR.bsh
6. $>./APEAR.bsh /SessLogs/informatica-session-log-file-name.txt

If your session log is in binary formatted, you may use the '-c' command line switch to convert the
session log.

./APEAR.bsh -c/informatica/server/bin/infacmd.sh /SessLogs/informatica-session-

log-file-name.log.bin

Where Can I report bug?

Please mail me "admin [at] dwbiconcepts [dot] com" to report any bug that you encounter