Will Gorman’s Blog

This weekend I had the pleasure of reading Maria Roldan and Adrian Pulvirenti’s Pentaho Data Integration 4 Cookbook, published by Packt Publishing.  I was one of the reviewers for Maria’s first Packt book, Pentaho 3.2 Data Integration: Beginner’s Guide, as well as a Packt author myself, so when I was asked if I’d be willing to write about the most recent addition to the Pentaho collection of books, I happily obliged.

I highly recommend this book to all those out there looking to learn more about PDI.  The book has many great recipes for specific situations, but also throughout the book you learn many important swiss-army-knife-type skills that will aid you in your daily use of Pentaho Data Integration.  The book includes everything from dealing with unstructured text files to working with fuzzy logic.  As a Java developer, I especially appreciate the many uses of the User Defined Java step for the more advanced scenarios.  The book also introduces the many uses of Pentaho Data Integration within Pentaho’s BI Suite, allowing power BI Developers to create a flow of information from a transformation to a report or dashboard.

Chapter 6, Understanding Data Flows, may be the most important chapter in this book.  Managing the merging and splitting of data within a transformation requires key insights that this book covers in detail.  Having this information will allow you to take your transformation building skills to the next level.

Thanks Maria and Adrian on the wonderful piece of work!  The copy I received will reside in the bullpen at Pentaho’s Headquarters here in Orlando, I’m sure many of the Engineers here will use and learn from it!  Now don’t waste any more time, get your own copy today!