Sunday, July 13, 2014

Pentaho Data Integration (aka Kettle) Documentation

Pentaho is a company that offers Pentaho Business Analytics, a suite of open source Business Intelligence (BI) products which provide data integration, OLAP services, reporting, dashboarding, data mining and ETL capabilities.[1] Pentaho was founded in 2004 by five founders.[2][3] and is headquartered in Orlando, FL, USA

Commonly referred to as the BI Platform, and recently renamed Business Analytics Platform (BA Platform), makes up the core software piece that hosts content created both in the server itself through plug-ins or files published to the server from the desktop applications. It includes features for managing security, running reports, displaying dashboards, report bursting, scripted business rules, OLAP analysis and scheduling out of the box.
Commercial plug-ins from Pentaho expand out-of-the-box features. A few open-source plug-in projects also expand capabilities of the server. The Pentaho BA Platform runs in the Apache Java Application Server. It can be embedded into other Java Application Servers.

In computing, extract, transform, and load (ETL) refers to a process in database usage and especially in data warehousing that:

Extracts data from outside sources
Transforms it to fit operational needs, which can include quality levels
Loads it into the end target (database, more specifically, operational data store, data mart, or data warehouse)
ETL systems are commonly used to integrate data from multiple applications, typically developed and supported by different vendors or hosted on separate computer hardware. The disparate systems containing the original data are frequently managed and operated by different employees. For example a cost accounting system may combine data from payroll, sales and purchasing.

In management information systems, a dashboard is "an easy to read, often single page, real-time user interface, showing a graphical presentation of the current status (snapshot) and historical trends of an organization’s key performance indicators to enable instantaneous and informed decisions to be made at a glance.

In computing, online analytical processing, or OLAP /ˈoʊlæp/, is an approach to answering multi-dimensional analytical (MDA) queries swiftly.[1] OLAP is part of the broader category of business intelligence, which also encompasses relational database, report writing and data mining.[2] Typical applications of OLAP include business reporting for sales, marketing, management reporting, business process management (BPM),[3] budgeting and forecasting, financial reporting and similar areas, with new applications coming up, such as agriculture.[4] The term OLAP was created as a slight modification of the traditional database term Online Transaction Processing ("OLTP")

Microsoft Dynamics NAV is an enterprise resource planning (ERP) software product from Microsoft.

 OEbif the Open Enterprise bi framework with Palo, Pentaho and SpagoBI.

NAVIX for Kettle / Pentaho ™

With the model developed by proconis Navision ™ Connector NAVIX get its first opportunity to access your Navision ™ databases without detours or performance bottlenecks. It does not matter if your data is in a Microsoft SQL Server ™ or in a Navision ™ database.

 a navision
driver for an ETL product. The driver is called NaviX for Pentaho / Kettle

List of Available Pentaho Data Integration Plug-Ins

The basics

See the Getting Started with Pentaho Data Integration Guide for an introduction with the latest version.
These mini flash demos (based on older versions) contain no sound, just text, but are useful as well:
We will try to create more micro-demos like this, feel free to suggest topics in the comments.

Useful links

Here are a few links to get you started:
Feel free to suggest more links for this area.

More information

Quick Start and Overview

Documentation for (Database) Developers and Users

Reference:

Highlighting New Features in PDI 5.0:

Books:

Other:

Migration:

Documentation for (Java) Developers

Current Kettle Development & Archive

Further Links & Information