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 (17 chapters)

Loading dimensions with data


A dimension is an entity that describes your business; customers and products are examples of dimensions. A dimension table, no surprises here, is a table that contains information about one or more dimensions. In this section, you will learn to load dimension tables, that is, fill dimension tables with data. The following are the topics covered:

  • Learning the basics of dimensions
  • Loading a time dimension
  • Loading slowly changing dimensions
  • Loading other kinds of dimensions

Learning the basics of dimensions

Dimensions are sets of attributes used to describe a business. A list of products along with their shape, color, or size is a typical example of dimension. Dimensions are one of the basic blocks of a data warehouse or data mart.

A dimension has the purpose of grouping, filtering, and describing data. Think of a typical report you would like to have—sales grouped by region, by customer, and method of payment that are ordered by date. The by word lets you identify potential...