Load delimited file but from a certain row on, input is garbled

Problem

You load a delimited file but from a certain row on, loaded input is garbled i. e. there seems to be an offset. Possibly this also leads to an crash of the session.

Cause

You probably have at least one text field that contains a line break as its content. The content is within quotes but none the less it does not work. By default (at least up to 9.6) PowerCenter interpretes a line break as the break for a new record no matter what the quoting is.

Solution

There is a custom property called

MatchQuotesPastEndOfLine

If set to

yes

it makes PowerCenter respect quoting of text fields over linebreaks.
You can activate this property either on session level

or as Integration Service property for all sessions at once. For the time being I do not have permissions to the admin console so I cannot provide a screen shot but we did that at my last employer's project.

Sources

• Importing Flat Files with Newline Characters in Informatica
• How to ignore new line characters fom the string while loading to csv file?? 

Workflow fails to start with "Error in expanding variable parameter"

Symptom

When trying to start a workflow in the workflow manager, you get in the integration service pane at the bottom:

Error in expanding variable parameter Please check the Integration Service log for more information.

Cause

You have a parameter file and tried to do sort of a self assignment like

$PMSourceFileDir=$PMSourceFileDir/some/path

Cure

Programming language usually support such things but PowerCenter parameter do not. Create a work around.