Pentaho Data Integration Quick Start Guide provides the guidance needed to get started with Pentaho Data Integration (PDI), covering the main features of the tool. The book shows the interactive features of the graphical designer, and explains the main ETL capabilities that the tool offers.
The book's content is based on PDI 8.1 Community Edition (CE), the latest version. However, it can be used with the Enterprise Edition (EE) as well. Many of the examples will also work with earlier versions of PDI.
This book is a helpful guide for software developers, business intelligence analysts, IT students, and everyone involved or interested in developing ETL solutions, or more generally in performing any kind of data manipulation.
Chapter 1, Getting Started with PDI, presents the tool. This chapter includes instructions for installing PDI and gives you the opportunity to explore and configure the graphical designer (Spoon).
Chapter 2, Getting Familiar with Spoon, explains the fundamentals of working with Spoon by designing, debugging, and testing a transformation.
Chapter 3, Extracting Data, discusses getting and combining data from different sources. In particular, this chapter explains how to get data from files and databases.
Chapter 4, Transforming Data, explains how to transform data in many ways. Also, it explains how to get system information and predefined variables to be used as part of the data flow.
Chapter 5, Loading Data, explains how to save the output of transformations into files and databases. In addition, it explains how to load data into a datamart.
Chapter 6, Orchestrating your Work, shows how to organize your work through simple PDI jobs. You will learn how to use jobs to sequence tasks, deal with files, send emails, run DDL, and to carry out other useful tasks.
PDI is a multiplatform tool, meaning that it can be installed and used under any operating system. The only prerequisite is to have JVM 1.8 installed. You will also need a good text editor, for example, Sublime III or Notepad ++. It's also recommended that you have access to a relational database. The examples in the book were built with PostgreSQL syntax, but you can adapt them to any other engine, as soon as there is a JDBC driver for it.Throughout the chapters, several internet links are provided to complement what is explained. Therefore, having an internet connection while reading is highly recommended.
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The code bundle for the book is also hosted on GitHub at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Pentaho-Data-Integration-Quick-Start-Guide. In case there's an update to the code, it will be updated on the existing GitHub repository.
We also have other code bundles from our rich catalog of books and videos available at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/. Check them out!
We also provide a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots/diagrams used in this book. You can download it here: http://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/downloads/PentahoDataIntegrationQuickStartGuide_ColorImages.pdf.
There are a number of text conventions used throughout this book.
CodeInText: Indicates code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles. Here is an example: "You should specify the full path, for instance:C:/Pentaho/data/ny_cities."
A block of code is set as follows:
SELECT full_name
, injury_type
, to_char(start_date_time, 'yyyy-mm-dd') as injury_date
FROM injury_phases i
JOIN display_names n ON i.person_id = n.id AND entity_type = 'persons'
AND start_date_time BETWEEN '2007-07-01' AND '2007-07-31'
ORDER BY full_name, injury_type
Bold: Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see onscreen. For example, words in menus or dialog boxes appear in the text like this. Here is an example: "You can save time by clicking theGet fields to selectbutton, which fills the grid with all the incoming fields."
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