Pentaho Data Integration (also known as Kettle) is an engine, along with a suite of tools, responsible for the processes of Extracting, Transforming, and Loading, better known as the ETL processes. Pentaho Data Integration (PDI) not only serves as an ETL tool, but it's also used for other purposes, such as migrating data between applications or databases, exporting data from databases to flat files, data cleansing, and much more. PDI has an intuitive, graphical, drag and drop design environment, and its ETL capabilities are powerful. However, getting started with PDI can be difficult and confusing. This book provides the guidance needed to overcome that difficulty, by covering the key features of PDI. Learning Pentaho Data Integration 8 CE explains the new interactive features of the graphical designer—Spoon, and its revamped look and feel. It also covers the newest features of the tool including Transformations and Jobs executors and the invaluable metadata injection capability.
The content of the book is based on PDI 8 Community Edition (CE). However, it can be used with the Enterprise Edition (EE) as well. Besides, if you are currently working with an earlier version of the tool, you should know that most of the content is also valid for PDI 6 and PDI 7.
By the end of the book, not only will you have experimented with all kinds of examples, but will also have gained the knowledge about developing useful, portable, reusable, and well-designed processes.
