Do these questions sound familiar?
- "Hey, can you tell me where does this value come from?"
- "Do you know where does data for this column come from?"
- "If I change values here, what columns will be affected?"
One thing great about PowerCenter is, it's very easy to trace column dependancies. You can quckly choose "Select Link Path" on desired column and trace it forward, backward or both, e.g:
Looks good. But what if you get more of those questions, like:
- "Can you send me an email describing columns A, B, C, D, F?"
- "Can you quickly send me some simple table with column dependancies?"
Select Link Path is extremly useful for development, but it is simply not possible to use it like 200 times if you need to create some document for large table. And what if there are more sources and targets?
One way is to use Metadata Manager. But what if it is not available? If you'd need something quick and handy, you can use:
Online Mapping XML Analyzer
It's a simple tool allowing you to create a Source to Target dependancy description in (almost) three clicks:
- Open the explorer
- Choose the mapping XML file
- Click "Upload"
As a result, you'll get a table as shown below:
In this example you can see all source columns listed (with column name, name of the source and source type) on the left with the corresponding target columns on the right. In addition you can see BusinessDate target column that is not being populated by any source column. It comes from an expression exp_Convert_Datatypes mentioned on the left.
This way you can see:
- all source columns and the target they affect (many to many relations supported),
- all target columns with corresponding source (even if it is not being populated by source).
In addition, you can copy the whole table to Excel and do whatever you need to make it suit your needs (format, add filters, etc.):
Please keep in mind that it is a work-in-progress. Feel free to let me know if you face issues, but be advised that I cannot guarantee to fix them and I also hold no responsibility for using the tool.
I hope this will be helpful!
