MDM Staging and Loading 2 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: During the delta detection phase in Informatica MDM staging, what is the primary purpose of comparing incoming records against the staging table?
- To validate foreign key relationships before loading
- To identify new, updated, or unchanged records from the source (Correct answer)
- To merge duplicate records into the best version of truth
- To apply trust scores to each incoming attribute
Correct answer: To identify new, updated, or unchanged records from the source
Delta detection compares incoming source records to already-staged data to classify each record as new, changed, or unchanged, reducing unnecessary processing.
Question 2: Which Informatica MDM staging table stores the raw source data before any cleansing or standardization is applied?
- _STG table (Correct answer)
- _BO table
- _XREF table
- _HIST table
Correct answer: _STG table
The _STG (staging) table holds the raw inbound source records exactly as they arrive, prior to any transformation or cleanse processing.
Question 3: In Informatica MDM, what happens to a source record that fails validation during the stage job?
- It is immediately deleted from the source system
- It is written to the error table and excluded from further processing (Correct answer)
- It is auto-corrected by the cleanse functions and reloaded
- It is promoted directly to the base object with a low trust score
Correct answer: It is written to the error table and excluded from further processing
Records failing stage validation are routed to the error/reject table, keeping bad data out of the hub while providing an audit trail for remediation.
Question 4: Which load type in Informatica MDM replaces all existing hub records with incoming source data, regardless of changes?
- Delta load
- Full load (Correct answer)
- Incremental load
- Merge load
Correct answer: Full load
A full load truncates or overwrites existing data and reloads everything from the source, useful for initial loads or complete refreshes.
Question 5: What is the role of the ROWID_OBJECT column that Informatica MDM assigns during the load process?
- It stores the source system's primary key for traceability
- It is the unique surrogate key MDM generates for each base object record (Correct answer)
- It tracks the number of times a record has been merged
- It holds the trust-weighted confidence score for each record
Correct answer: It is the unique surrogate key MDM generates for each base object record
ROWID_OBJECT is the MDM-generated surrogate key that uniquely identifies each record in the base object table, independent of any source system key.
Question 6: When configuring a batch group in Informatica MDM, which job must typically run BEFORE the load job to ensure data is ready?
- Match job
- Merge job
- Stage job (Correct answer)
- Promote job
Correct answer: Stage job
The stage job must run first to populate the staging tables from source data before the load job can move records into the base object.
Question 7: In Informatica MDM Hub, the XREF table created during load primarily serves which purpose?
- Stores consolidated best-version-of-truth attribute values
- Maps source system keys to MDM surrogate keys for cross-referencing (Correct answer)
- Holds historical versions of records before survivorship
- Tracks match rule execution results per record pair
Correct answer: Maps source system keys to MDM surrogate keys for cross-referencing
The XREF (cross-reference) table links each source system's native key to the corresponding MDM ROWID_OBJECT, enabling traceability back to originating systems.
MDM Staging and Loading 2
During the delta detection phase in Informatica MDM staging, what is the primary purpose of comparing incoming records against the staging table?