Yesterday I went to the Talend Roadshow. 3 hours nicely spent and the it worthed the time and traffic jam. No money involved as it was free.
I liked a lot that it was a "hands on work" seminar and not a marketing presentation. Benjamin, the guy who presented the product (btw: the open source version), had a good IT background and this was handy.
So, they provided us with some laptops, a practice book (5 exercises) and the Talend User Manual. The nice think was that Benjamin actually showed us how to use the most important Talend component: tMap. It took my one full day (at work, so just between meetings and other stuff) to understand tMap and Talend and I was unsuccessful. why? too less time, too less tutorials on "how to start" using it. So, at that moment, I ended up using Kettle (from Spoon) just because another collegue has the knowledge already.
After the yesterday Talend Roadhow I must say that I like better Talend than Kettle because:
1. I can debug it (put a breakpoint on the java code)
2. with Traces enabled, I can see on real time the data being processed (really handy)
But, perhaps, if I went to a Kettle Readshow (nope, it doesn't exist) then Kettle would acquire more points also.
My conclusions about the Talend Roadshow:
1. it's free
2. the person presenting it (Benjamin) was one of the French founders (I think), so an IT person, no marketing boring presentation
3. all the IT questions got an answer
4. we actually had to work with the product
5. too bad there was not indepth intro about the facts/dimensions components; but I guess that's because the attendees should have already know DataMarts.
So, if you get the chance, GO CHECK IT OUT.
PS: I will try now to go my kettle jobs in Talend and see which is easier to implement/faster/better debugging.
5 comments:
This looks like an interesting tool and I have a question: Can you actually integrate code in the jobs you design in order do do some custom transformations on the data?
Also, if you need to get a sense on Dimension Modeling, I recommend you read this article: http://www.dbmsmag.com/9708d15.html
@Mihai
yep, you can alctually write in Java your own expression what you can use for the transformation. And that is damn great!
Thanks for the link (ps: there's also a really handy book called: Mastering Data Warehouse Aggregates Solutions for Star Schema Performance)
Hi Emiliai,
Thanks for the review of the Talend roadshow. I didn't know such a training existed but am interested in learning more about Talend with an IT expert.
Now I'd like to know a few things, as you have signed up and been to the roadshow:
- Can everyone have access to the Talend software training?
- When and where the next roadshow will take place?
- Maybe you have a link to know more about the roadshow?
Thanks a lot for your feedback.
Hi, Tom
1. Everyone can access the Talend Roadshow, but for the trainnning I think you have to pay. (I understood the trainning goes deeper and teaches you how to write talend components for your own transformations).
2. here is a link about the next Roadshows I got in my mail: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=viPBdDXcy6FdxZu_2fdPY2Hw_3d_3d
3. this might help a bit more: http://www.talend.com/news/newsletter12_en.php
Note: I got access to their Roadshow just be subscribing to the Talend Newsletter.
Thanks for the links. I looked at the roadshow page and I will go to one of them. The Newsletter was good also. I suscribed.
Very useful.
Tom.
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