Introduction

Kettle, also known as PDI, is mostly used as a standalone application. However, it is not an isolated tool, but part of the Pentaho Business Intelligence Suite. As such, it can also interact with other components of the suite, For example, having Kettle act as the data source for a report or a dashboard, or even interfacing with the Pentaho User Console, so that users can run Kettle jobs that clean up their data as needed. This chapter shows you how to run Kettle jobs and transformations in that context.

This chapter assumes a basic knowledge of the Pentaho Business Intelligence platform and the tools that make up the Pentaho Suite. If you are not familiar with these tools, it is recommended that you visit the wiki page (wiki.pentaho.com) or the Pentaho BI Suite Community Edition (CE) site: http://community.pentaho.com/.

As another option, there is a general reference to the suite called Pentaho Solutions (Wiley) by Roland Bouman and Jos van Dongen that provides a good introduction...