The metadata data source lets you inquire about a single file in XMI format. The XML Metadata Interchange (XMI) is an Object Management Group (OMG) standard for exchanging metadata information via XML. It can be used for any metadata whose metamodel can be expressed in a Meta-Object Facility (MOF). The most common use of XMI is as an interchange format for UML models, although it can also be used for serialization of models in other languages (metamodels). Some tools of the Pentaho suite (for example, Pentaho Data Integration) can generate XMI files to represent the metadata, and with this data source, they can be used to generate reports.

Once this data source type is selected, a modal window is shown, as follows:

As you can see at the top of the window, in this data source you can also define the dataset using a standard configuration or script. The script is similar to what you saw for the JDBC data source, and for this reason, we will concentrate the discussion...