There are two main artifacts in PDI: transformations and jobs. While transformations deal mainly with data, jobs deal with tasks or processes. With a job, you organize a list of tasks by indicating the order of execution and deciding whether the execution should depend on certain conditions. Consider the following sample PDI job:

Sample PDI job

One of the good things about PDI is that by simply taking a look at the graphical representation of a job or a transformation in Spoon, it is quite easy to deduce its general purpose. In this example, we can see that the sample job checks some database connections. If everything is okay, it executes a daily process. Then, it compress some files in a ZIP format, putting the files in a remote server with FTP. If there is a problem with the database connection, the job sends an email and aborts.

Let's list some more examples of PDI jobs, as follows: