Book Image

Pentaho Data Integration 4 Cookbook

Book Image

Pentaho Data Integration 4 Cookbook

Overview of this book

Pentaho Data Integration (PDI, also called Kettle), one of the data integration tools leaders, is broadly used for all kind of data manipulation such as migrating data between applications or databases, exporting data from databases to flat files, data cleansing, and much more. Do you need quick solutions to the problems you face while using Kettle? Pentaho Data Integration 4 Cookbook explains Kettle features in detail through clear and practical recipes that you can quickly apply to your solutions. The recipes cover a broad range of topics including processing files, working with databases, understanding XML structures, integrating with Pentaho BI Suite, and more. Pentaho Data Integration 4 Cookbook shows you how to take advantage of all the aspects of Kettle through a set of practical recipes organized to find quick solutions to your needs. The initial chapters explain the details about working with databases, files, and XML structures. Then you will see different ways for searching data, executing and reusing jobs and transformations, and manipulating streams. Further, you will learn all the available options for integrating Kettle with other Pentaho tools. Pentaho Data Integration 4 Cookbook has plenty of recipes with easy step-by-step instructions to accomplish specific tasks. There are examples and code that are ready for adaptation to individual needs.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Pentaho Data Integration 4 Cookbook
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Introduction


Files are the most primitive, but also the most used format to store and interchange data. PDI has the ability to read data from all kind of files and different formats. It also allows you to write back to files in different formats as well.

Reading and writing simple files is a very straightforward task. There are several steps under the input and output categories of steps that allow you to do it. You pick the step, configure it quickly, and you are done. However, when the files you have to read or create are not simple—and that happens most of the time—the task of reading or writing can become a tedious exercise if you don't know the tricks. In this chapter, you will learn not only the basics for reading and writing files, but also all the how-tos for dealing with them.

Note

This chapter covers plain files (txt, csv, fixed width) and Excel files. For recipes for reading and writing XML files, refer to Chapter 3, Manipulating XML Structures.