Binary log files

I'm not a fan of version 8's binary log files. They're kind of hard to work with, and especially so from the Windows Explorer viewpoint, since I haven't yet found a command line tool to associate to those types which can open them (if you know of one, I'd love to hear what it is!).

But Informatica isn't unforgiving in this regard, there's an option you can set if you're kind of a luddite like me, and prefer the standard text files. Just choose "Write Backwards Compatible Log File" in the Session's properties.

Be aware that this will actually create a PAIR of log files for your job - a .bin logfile, and a regular ASCII log file. Curiously enough, the .bin log file will be twice as large as your regular ASCII log file (so much for progress). Workflow manager will still read the .bin file - so it will still look all fancy (as compared to previous Informatica versions), but you'll also have the regular file in case you need to do some historical investigation, you can do so easily.

You can use the "Import" function within Workflow monitor, but I find it to be kind of a nuisance. Go to "Tools" and "Import Log" to import .bin files directly into Workflow Monitor if you want to read old .bin files.