How do full and incremental Informatica workflow differ?

Question

Hi:
I've read that a custom Informatica workflow should have full and incremental versions. I've compared the incremental and full versions of several seeded OBIA workflows, but I cannot find how they differ. For example, when I look at the session objects for each workflow they both have a source filter that limits a date field by LAST_EXTRACT_DATE.
Can someone shed some light on this?
Thanks.

Answer 1

To answer your question, they differ in various ways for various mappings. For most FACT tables which hold high volume transactional data, there may be a SQL override in the FULL session that uses INITIALEXTRACT_DATE and a different override in the INCREMENTAL (does not have Full Suffix) that uses LASTEXTRACT_DATE. For dimension tables, its not always required that you have a different logic for FULL versus incremental.
Also, all FULL sessions (even if they have the same SQL) will have a BULK option turned on in the Session properties that allow a faster load since the table is usually truncated on FULL versus Incremental. As a best practice, for FACTS, it is best to have a FULL versus INCREMENTAL session. For Dimensions, depending on the volume of transactions or the change capture date field available, you may or may not have different logic. If you do a FULL load, however, it is better to use BULK to speed up the load.
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