Error Handling Approach

Error Handling is one of the most important component in any Data warehouse or data integration project. If process is not able to handle and manage ERROR effeciently, then it is very rare that the project will succeed.



Following steps and questions should be answered

1. Who is the business owner of the process/project

2. Who will be responsible for Error correction

3. What will the interface to present the ERROR to business community

4. Error correction will be at source or IT will be responsibile to re-run error correction

5. Error retention period in ERROR table



Above are few points to consider before deciding on the ERROR management process. Any ETL will provide feature to implement ERROR management. And sometime we go outside the ETL tool for presentation and correction of ERROR.



Informatica version 7.x onward provide feature where you can capture Error information at transformation level and Source record in ERROR table or ERROR File. These tables or files can be re-processed to present the error records to business community. But in my opinion it is always better to have a common ERROR management process of all data integration project ( independent of tool). Any ETL tool can support that Error management process.