Talend: tips and tricks part 1

Posted on August 4, 2014 by Jessica Smets

This blog contains some convenient tips and tricks that will make working
with the open source tool Talend for data integration a lot more efficient. This
blogpost will be especially useful for people who are just discovering this
amazing tool, yet I am sure that people who have been using it for a while
will also find it very helpful. These series of tips will be spread over multiple
blog entries so make sure to check back often for future tips!
1. Testing expressions in the tMap component
Using the tMap component, you have the possibility to test your expressions.
This way you can easily see whether or not the result is what you expected it
to be. You can also use this to determine whether or not your expression will
error. Lets create an example.
Weve got details of employees as input for our tMap. We would like the first
name to be shown in uppercase. First of all, go into the expression builder by
clicking the ellipsis next to your expression.

To convert the first name to uppercase, we have to use the StringHandling

function UPCASE. This will result in the following
expression:StringHandling.UPCASE(employee.First_name)
After youre done filling in test values, click on the Test! button and wait for
the result. If everything goes as expected, you should see your first name in
uppercase on the right side of the window.

2. Optimizing the appearance of the tLogRow component output

tLogRow is one of the most frequently used components. It is recommended
that you learn how to optimize its use. Firstly, make sure that you always
have the right appearance selected for your output. You can find this
property in the basic settings of your tLogRow-component.

There are three types of Modes that you can choose between:

Basic

Basic will generate a new line for each record, separated by the Field
Separator youve chosen (see image above). When using basic mode, I
highly recommend to check the Print header option when working with
multiple column records or multiple outputs, purely for visibility reasons.

Table (print values in cells of a table)

The table mode shows the records and their headers in a table-format,
including the name of the component that generated this output (in our
case: tLogRow_1). This emphasizes the importance of properly naming
everything, especially when you have multiple components that generate
output. In this case, it would have been better to rename our component to
EMPLOYEES. Personally, I prefer this mode.

Vertical (each row is a key value/list)

Vertical mode will show a table for each one of your records.

The output mode you decide to use depends on what youre trying to
visualize. For example, when your goal is to show a single string, I would
recommend using the basic mode. But when you have multiple table outputs
(for example: departments, customers and employees in a single output), Im
certain the table mode would be the best option.
Sometimes your data is spread over multiple lines, resulting in an unclear
output, like shown in the image below.

To force the output to put all the data on one single line, you can uncheck the
Wrap option. This option is located underneath your output and will enable
a horizontal scrollbar.

Do you also want to be able to get data regarding tweets using Talend, as
shown in the image above? Read my previous blogpost and find out how!
3. Resetting windows and maximizing/minimizing them
Sometimes you accidently close a window and have a hard time finding a
way to get it back. You can very easily reset your environment by clicking on
Window Reset Perspective.

You can see all of the views by clicking on Windows Show View
Talend. Some of the views are not shown by default, such as Modules.
Modules can be used to import .jar-files without having to restart your studio,
which will most likely save you some time.
Lastly, because Talend is Eclipse-based, you have the possibility to maximize
and minimize windows. I personally use this function when examining the
output of a tLogRow-component including a lot of data. You can achieve this
by either double-clicking on the window or by right-clicking on it and
selecting Minimize/Maximize.

Thats it for now. I hope you enjoyed reading this blog and make sure to
return soon for future blogs!
Posted in data integration, ETL, Talend, Tips and Tricks | Tagged ETL, Talend | Leave a comment

Use of contexts within Talend

Posted on May 27, 2014 by Dieter Van Ransbeek

When developing jobs in Talend, its sometimes necessary to run them on

different environments. For other business cases, you need to pass values
between multiple sub-jobs in a project. To solve this kind of issues, Talend
introduced the notion of contexts.
In this blogpost we elaborate on the usage of contexts for easily switching
between a development and a production environment by storing the
connection data in context variables. This allows you to determine on which
environment the job should run, at runtime, without having to recompile or
modify your project.
To start using contexts in Talend you have two possible scenarios:
1) you can create a new context group and its corresponding context
variables manually, or
2) you can export an existing connection as a context.
In this example well go over exporting an existing Oracle connection as a
context.
Double click an existing database connection to edit it and click Next.
ClickExport as context

NOTE There are some connections that dont allow you to export them as a
context. In that case youll have to create the context group and its variables
manually, add the group/variables to your job, and use the variables in the
properties of the components of your job.

After youve clicked the Export as context button youll see the Create/Edit
context group screen. Enter a name, purpose and description and click Next.

Now youll see all the context variables that belong to this context group.
Notice that Talend has already created all the context variables that are
needed for the HR connection. If you want to change their names you can
simply click them and they become editable.
Click the Values as table tab.