Introduction

On many occasions, the development of Kettle jobs and transformations involves manipulation of files, such as reading or writing a file along with other manipulations. Look at the following sample scenario, where you have to:

• Get a file with orders from a remote server

• Validate and load the orders into a database

• Move the processed file to a designated folder

• Rename the older version if a file with that name already exists

• Generate a logfile with details of the errors and put that logfile back on to the server for further review if the orders in the file are not valid

In this situation, besides reading and writing files, you also have to transfer, rename, and move them.

Copying, moving, deleting, and transferring files, and listing of files or directories, are tasks not only needed for these situations, but in everyday life. It's common to have lot of files that need to be organized in several ways, and for different purposes.

Kettle has a rich set of steps and job entries for doing...