Evaluate and Learn Pentaho Data Integration

Last updated
Save as PDF

As you explore Pentaho Data Integration, you will be introduced to the major components, watch videos, work through hands-on examples, and read about the different features. Go at your own pace. Feel free to dig into the documentation or to contact Pentaho sales support if you have questions.

The PDI evaluation track is divided into several parts.

PDI Basics
Get Acquainted with Spoon
Build Transformations and Jobs
Explore Big Data and Streamlined Data Refinery
Learn About Kitchen, Pan, and Carte

PDI Basics

This section familiarizes you with PDI and introduces you to basic terminology and concepts. Then, you learn how to start and configure Spoon and take a spin through the interface.

Table 1. PDI Basics Checklist
Task	Do This	Objective
What is PDI and How Does it Fit Into the Pentaho Business Analytics Platform?	Get a basic understanding of what PDI does. View a video that explains how PDI fits into the Business Analytics Platform.	Understand PDI's role in the Pentaho Business Analytics platform.
PDI Components	Read about Pentaho Data Integration Architecture. Learn about DI components	Understand different components of the Pentaho Integration Architecture. Learn the primary functions of the Data Integration Server. Understand the relationship between PDI and Kettle.

Get Acquainted with Spoon

Spoon is the PDI design tool. In this section you will set up Spoon, take a tour of the Spoon interface, and learn about the different Spoon perspectives.

Table 2. Get Acquainted with Spoon Checklist
Task	Do This	Objective
Install and Configure PDI Components	Check out the hardware and software requirements for PDI. Download Trial version of the Business Analytics Platform. (The platform includes PDI.) Read the Install All Components documentation to install the software. Configure the DI Server and Spoon.	Learn about Pentaho's hardware and software requirements. Install PDI Using the Wizard Configure the DI Server and Spoon
Introduction to Spoon	Start the DI Server. Start Spoon. Take a tour of the Spoon interface.	Learn how to start the DI Server and Spoon. Understand the different parts of the Spoon interface.
PDI Basic Terminology	Read about Terminology and Basic Concepts.	Become familiar with transformations, steps, hops, and jobs. Understand the relationship between transformations, steps, and hops. Know what a job is, and what a job is composed of. Be able to apply what you have learned about terminology to the Spoon interface.
Get a Different Perspective	Get an overview of Spoon Perspectives. Review the Model Perspective. Check out the Visualization Perspective. Explore the Instaview Perspective. View the Schedule Perspective.	Be able to identify different perspectives. Learn how to access different perspectives. Be able to identify the basic types of tasks that you can perform with the different perspectives.

Build Transformations and Jobs

Now that your environment is set up and you are familiar with Spoon, you are ready to build transformations and jobs. Work through the tutorial in this section.

Table 3. Create Your First Checklist
Task	Do This	Objective
Create a Connection to the DI Repository	Create a connection to the DI Repository.	Learn how to create a connection to the DI Repository.
Create Your First Transformation	Work through the exercise on Creating a Transformation that involves a flat file. Click through the links that are on the bottom of the page to complete the exercise. Save the exercise.	Learn how to retrieve data from a flat file using an Input step. Apply filters and to create a hop. Load data into a relational database and learn how to test database connections. Follow an example on how to resolve missing information. Run the transformation.
Create a Job	Create a job to execute the transformation.	Be able to articulate why you would create a job. Create a job for a transformation.
Schedule a Job	Schedule a job to execute the transformation at a later time.	Schedule a job.
Learn more about commonly-used steps and job entries.	Review commonly-used steps and job entries.	There are over 330 available job entries and transformation steps. There is a step for virtually anything that you want to do. But, when you are learning about PDI, it is helpful to review the most commonly-used steps and entries.

Explore Big Data and Streamlined Data Refinery

In this section, you will learn how to use transformation steps to connect to a variety of Big Data data sources, including Hadoop, NoSQL, and analytical databases such as MongoDB. You can then try working through the detailed, step-by-step tutorials, and peruse the out-of-the-box steps that Spoon provides. Learn how to work with Streamlined Data Refinery. Read about Instaview. Then, you will have an opportunity to move beyond the basics and learn how to edit transformations and metadata models.

Table 4. Explore Big Data and Streamlined Data Refinery Checklist
Task	Do This	Objective
What is Big Data?	Watch one of our Big Data Videos. Read about Hadoop Resources.	Gain an overview of Big Data and PDI. Check out Cassandra, Splunk, MongoDB, and Hadoop Big Data resources.
Learn about Streamlined Data Refinery	Learn how to work with Streamlined Data Refinery.	Learn how streamlined data refinery works.
What is Instaview?	Learn about Instaview in this video. Take a tour of Instaview.	Gain an overview of instaview and understand when you might use it.
Introduction to DI Big Data Steps and Transformations	Find out what Big Data steps are available, out-of-the-box.	Review available Big Data transformation steps. Review Big Data job steps. Review the YARN steps.
Configure a Hadoop Distribution	Find out which Hadoop Distributions are available and how to configure them. (Note, you should already have a cluster set up to perform this task.)	Configure a Hadoop Distribution. Pentaho's Big Data adaptive layer supports over 20 different versions of popular Hadoop distributions such as Apache, Cloudera, Hortonworks, MapR, and Intel.
PDI, Hadoop, Cassandra, MongoDB, and MapR Tutorials	Work through Big Data Tutorials.	Explore how to load, transform, extract, and report on data in a Hadoop and MapR clusters. Learn how to write and read data to and from Cassandra, and how to create reports. Learn how to create MongoDB reports and how to read and write data to and from MongoDB.
Beyond the Basics: Edit Transformations and Metadata Models	Edit Transformations and Metadata Models.	Edit data transformations Edit metadata models
Blend Big Data	Watch a video about how to use PDI to blend Big Data.	Learn about the concept of blending data. Learn about Pentaho's just-in-time approach Big Data blending.

About Kitchen, Pan, and Carte

These lessons provide an overview of Kitchen and Pan, which are command lines tool for executing jobs and transformations modeled in Spoon. You will also learn about Carte, which is a web server that enables remote execution of jobs and transformations.

Table 5. About Kitchen, Pan, and Carte Checklist
Task	Do This	Objective
What are Kitchen and Pan?	Learn about Kitchen and Pan	Gain an overview of Kitchen and Pan.
Intro to Kitchen, Pan, and Carte.	Learn about Pan's options. Discover Kitchen options. Read about Carte clusters.	Learn about the capabilities of Kitchen, Pan, and Carte

Learn More

Now that you have completed an initial evaluation of PDI, dig a little deeper. Find out how to:

Use newer steps and entries, like R Script Executor, Pentaho MapReduce, and Kettle Clustering on YARN.
Create other DI Solutions.
Administer PDI.
Integrate with different security protocols, like Pentaho Security, LDAP, MSAD, and Kerberos.
Check out our developer's documentation.
Use Agile BI to create reports.
Learn more about predictive analytics by watching this video.

Next Steps

Contact Pentaho sales support to learn more about how Pentaho can be customized to meet your needs. The flexibility of PDI means that you can explore, process, transform, export, and visualize data in a variety of ways.
Check out the DI Development workflow.