Book Image

Pentaho Data Integration Cookbook - Second Edition - Second Edition

Book Image

Pentaho Data Integration Cookbook - Second Edition - Second Edition

Overview of this book

Pentaho Data Integration is the premier open source ETL tool, providing easy, fast, and effective ways to move and transform data. While PDI is relatively easy to pick up, it can take time to learn the best practices so you can design your transformations to process data faster and more efficiently. If you are looking for clear and practical recipes that will advance your skills in Kettle, then this is the book for you. Pentaho Data Integration Cookbook Second Edition guides you through the features of explains the Kettle features in detail and provides easy to follow recipes on file management and databases that can throw a curve ball to even the most experienced developers. Pentaho Data Integration Cookbook Second Edition provides updates to the material covered in the first edition as well as new recipes that show you how to use some of the key features of PDI that have been released since the publication of the first edition. You will learn how to work with various data sources – from relational and NoSQL databases, flat files, XML files, and more. The book will also cover best practices that you can take advantage of immediately within your own solutions, like building reusable code, data quality, and plugins that can add even more functionality. Pentaho Data Integration Cookbook Second Edition will provide you with the recipes that cover the common pitfalls that even seasoned developers can find themselves facing. You will also learn how to use various data sources in Kettle as well as advanced features.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
Pentaho Data Integration Cookbook Second Edition
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
References
Index

Generating sample data for testing purposes


Having sample data to test your transformations is very useful and allows you to move faster through your development and testing process. There are several cases where you will want to generate sample data, for example:

  • To quickly populate datasets with random data

  • Manually generate specific information

  • Generate large volumes of custom data

Take a subset from a large volume of data. In this recipe you will learn how to generate a dataset with 100 random rows in different formats (integer, string, and dates). Then, in the There's more section, you will find alternative solutions for generating data for testing.

How to do it...

Carry out the following steps:

  1. Create a new transformation.

  2. Drop a Generate rows step from the Input category. Here, set the Limit textbox to 100.

  3. Add a Generate random value step from the Input category. Add two elements to the grid: randomInteger of random integer type, and randomString of random string type.

  4. Doing a preview on this...