The Informatica platform uses the following types of connectivity to communicate among clients, services, and other components in the domain:
TCP/IP network protocol
Application services and the Service Managers in a domain use TCP/IP network protocol to communicate with other nodes and services. The clients also use TCP/IP to communicate with application services. You can configure the host name and port number for TCP/IP communication on a node when you install the Informatica services. You can configure the port numbers used for services on a node during installation or in Informatica Administrator.
Native drivers
The Data Integration Service uses native drivers to communicate with databases. The PowerCenter Integration Service and the PowerCenter Repository Service use native drivers to communicate with databases. Native drivers are packaged with the database server and client software. Install and configure the native database client software on the machines where the services run.
ODBC
The ODBC drivers are installed with the Informatica services and the Informatica clients. The integration services use ODBC drivers to communicate with databases.
JDBC
The Model Repository Service uses JDBC to connect to the Model repository database. The Metadata Manager Service uses JDBC to connect to the Metadata Manager repository and metadata source repositories.
The gateway nodes in the Informatica domain use JDBC to connect to the domain configuration repository.