BI with Pentaho Part-III

In this post I will discuss my experience with Kettle Output Transformations. As like Input Transformations, Kettle has ample of Output Transformations as well. Most of them are similar to their Input counterparts. I’ve list down the ones which are different.

S No.	Transformation	Usage
1	Delete	Allows you to delete data from database table depending upon stream value
2	Excel Output	It allows you to write to a specific Sheet in Excel files. It also gives you an option to use Template as well.
3	Insert / Update	Another useful transformation. Ideally suited for Data warehouse applications. You can select columns for which you want to lookup the values and the corresponding columns which will be updated on match or Insert
4	SQL File Output	To generate SQL statements fir Inserts with option to Create Table or Truncate table alongside.
5	Synchronize after merge	As per the Kettle Wiki, this transformation should be used in conjunction with Merge Rows transformation. It commits the changes which are marked by Merge Rows transformation as changed, New and Delete etc. As per my understanding its similar to Update Strategy of Informatica.
6	Update	Similar to Insert / Update transformation, but for a very specific case where you just want to Update records and skip the Inserts.

I’ll cover more transformations in next posts.