Tour Spoon Perspectives

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Overview

Links to the different perspectives in PDI.

Spoon is an integrated environment enabling you to work in close cooperation with business users to build business intelligence solutions more quickly and efficiently. When you are working in Spoon, you can change perspectives to easily switch back and forth from:

Designing ETL jobs and transformations—the Data Integration perspective
Modeling your data—the Model Editor perspective
Scheduling jobs and transformations—the Schedule perspective
Visualizing data models—the Visualize perspective

As users provide you with feedback about how the data is presented to them, you can quickly make iterative changes to your data directly in Spoon by changing perspectives. From within Spoon, you can change perspectives using the Perspective menu located in the upper-right corner of the window.

Other perspectives are also available from the marketplace if you install a plugin containing one. For example, if you install the Vizor plugin, the Vizor perspective appears in the drop down menu

Data Integration Perspective

The Data Integration interfaces allows you to create transformations, jobs, and more.

Component	Name	Description
	Toolbar	Single-click access to common actions such as create a new file, opening existing documents, save and save as.
	Perspectives Menu	Switch between the different perspectives. Data Integration — Create ETL transformations and jobs Model Editor — Design reporting and OLAP metadata models which can be tested right from within the Visualization perspective or published to the Pentaho BA Server Schedule — Manage scheduled ETL activities on the Data Integration Server Visualize — Test reporting and OLAP metadata models created in the Model perspective using the Report Design Wizard and Analyzer clients
	Sub-toolbar	Provides buttons for quick access to common actions specific to the transformation or job such as Run, Preview, and Debug.
	Design and View Tabs	The Design tab of the Explore pane provides an organized list of transformation steps or job entries used to build transformations and jobs. Transformations are created by simply dragging transformation steps from the Design tab onto the canvas and connecting them with hops to describe the flow of data. The View tab of the Explore pane shows information for each job or transformation. This includes information such as available database connections and which steps and hops are used. In the image, the Design tab is selected.
	Canvas	Main design area for building transformations and jobs describing the ETL activities you want to perform

Table 1. Spoon Icon Descriptions
Icon	Description
	Create a new job or transformation
	Open transformation/job from file if you are not connected to a repository or from the repository if you are connected to one
	Explore the repository
	Save the transformation/job to a file or to the repository
	Save the transformation/job under a different name or file name (Save as)
	Run transformation/job; runs the current transformation from XML file or repository
	Pause transformation
	Stop transformation
	Preview transformation: runs the current transformation from memory. You can preview the rows that are produced by selected steps.
	Run the transformation in debug mode; allows you to troubleshoot execution errors
	Replay the processing of a transformation
	Verify transformation
	Run an impact analysis on the database
	Generate the SQL that is needed to run the loaded transformation.
	Launch the database explorer allowing you to preview data, run SQL queries, generate DDL and more
	Show execution results pane
	Lock transformation

Model Editor Perspective

The Model Editor perspective is used for designing reporting and OLAP metadata models that can be tested from within the Visualize perspective or published to the Pentaho BA Server.

Component	Name	Description
	Menubar	The Menubar provides access to common features such as properties, actions and tools. The right side of the menubar is also where you can switch between perspectives.
	Main Toolbar	The Main Toolbar provides single-click access to common actions such as additions of measures, dimensions, hierarchies, levels, categories, fields, and properties. See Tour the Data Source Model Editor for more details.
	Data Panel	Contains a list of available fields from your data source that can be used either as measure or dimension levels (attributes) within your OLAP dimensional model.
	Model Panel	Used to create measures and dimensions of your Analysis Cubes from the fields in the data panel. Create a new measure or dimension by dragging a field from the data panel over onto the Measures or Dimension folder in the Model tree.
	Properties Panel	Used to modify the properties associated with the selection in the Model Panel tree.

Schedule Perspective

The Schedule perspective is used for managing schedules of jobs and transformations. When you have scheduled a job or transformation to occur at a specified time by selecting Action > Schedule, the resulting scheduled task appears in the listing of this perspective. See Use the Schedule Perspective to Run Transformations and Jobs for more details.

Component	Name	Description
	Menubar	The Menubar provides access to common features such as properties, actions and tools. The right side of the menubar is also where you can switch between perspectives.
	Main Toolbar	The Main Toolbar provides single-click access to common actions such as edit, refresh, enable, disable, or delete. See Use the Schedule Perspective to Run Transformations and Jobs for more details.
	Schedule Panel	Contains a list of schedules to select. Double-click on a highlighted schedule to access the Schedule dialog for editing.

Visualize Perspective

The Visualize perspective allows you to test reporting and OLAP metadata models created in the Model Editor perspective using the Report Design Wizard and Analyzer clients respectively. See Get Started with Analyzer Reports for more details about the Analyzer client.

Component	Name	Description
	Menubar	The Menubar provides access to common features such as properties, actions, and tools. The right side of the menubar is also where you can switch between perspectives.
	Main Toolbar	The Main Toolbar provides single-click access to common actions such as undoing steps, redoing steps, exporting, adding filters, rearranging the layout, refreshing, setting properties. See Get Started with Analyzer Reports for more details.
	Field List	Contains the list of measures and attributes as defined in your model. These fields can be dragged into the Report Area to build your query.
	Layout	Allows you to drag Measures and Levels into the Row, Column, and Measures area so you can control how it appears in the workspace.
	Canvas	Drag fields from the field list into the Report Area to build your query. Right click on a measure or level to further customize your report with sub-totals, formatting, and more.