Book Image

Learning Pentaho Data Integration 8 CE - Third Edition

Book Image

Learning Pentaho Data Integration 8 CE - Third Edition

Overview of this book

Pentaho Data Integration(PDI) is an intuitive and graphical environment packed with drag-and-drop design and powerful Extract-Tranform-Load (ETL) capabilities. This book shows and explains the new interactive features of Spoon, the revamped look and feel, and the newest features of the tool including transformations and jobs Executors and the invaluable Metadata Injection capability. We begin with the installation of PDI software and then move on to cover all the key PDI concepts. Each of the chapter introduces new features, enabling you to gradually get practicing with the tool. First, you will learn to do all kind of data manipulation and work with simple plain files. Then, the book teaches you how you can work with relational databases inside PDI. Moreover, you will be given a primer on data warehouse concepts and you will learn how to load data in a data warehouse. During the course of this book, you will be familiarized with its intuitive, graphical and drag-and-drop design environment. By the end of this book, you will learn everything you need to know in order to meet your data manipulation requirements. Besides, your will be given best practices and advises for designing and deploying your projects.
Table of Contents (23 chapters)
Title Page
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface

Best practices to design jobs and transformations


Best practices not only make the development process easier, but also improve the quality of your ETL processes and facilitate their maintenance. By considering the following list of best practices, your projects will have more chances of success.

Styling your work

The following is a simple list of practices to take into account while working with Spoon:

  • Outline your ideas on paper before creating a Transformation or Job. Don't drop steps randomly on the canvas trying to get things to work; otherwise, you will end up with a Transformation or Job that is difficult to understand and might not be of any use.
  • Document your work:
    • Write at least a simple description of the Transformation and Job properties windows.
    • Replace the default names of the steps and Job entries with meaningful ones.
    • Use notes to clarify the purpose of transformations and jobs. Color-code your notes for a better effect; for example, use a color for notes explaining the purpose...