How does Informatica PowerCenter (in versions 8 and 9.5) connect to its Oracle database?

Step 1 - PowerCenter reads its nodemeta.xml config file, to find the domain connection info:

nodemeta.xml:

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<dbHost>yourInfaHost</dbHost>  
<dbPort>1521</dbPort>  
<dbType>Oracle</dbType>  
<dbName>yourInfaDb</dbName>  
<dbConnectionString></dbConnectionString>  

This becomes displayed in the Administrator (domain properties) as something along the following lines:

jdbc:informatica:oracle://yourInfaHost:1521;ServiceName=yourInfaDb;MaxPooledStatements=20;CatalogOptions=0;BatchPerformanceWorkaround=true

Note the use of a custom driver - a wrapper around the Oracle standard driver: jdbc:informatica:oracle

This means that Oracle’s OID configuration cannot be directly used here, by the way.

Step 2 - PowerCenter gets the repository connection data from the domain schema & connects to the repository schema:

Again, you can see this in the Administrator.