Month: July 2007

PDI 3.0 : first milestone available

UPDATE: version 3.0 has been released!

Dear Kettle fan,

While this first milestone release of Kettle version 3 is absolutely NOT YET READY FOR PRODUCTION, it’s a nice way to see the speed of our new architecture for yourself.
Version 3.0 is a complete refactoring of the complete Kettle code base and as such it will take a while for things to settle down again.
That being said, we have a number of tests that tell us this might be a good time to tell the world we’re still very much alive.

As noted above, this release focuses on performance. Version 3.0 was reworked to completely separate data and metadata. This has led to significant performance gains across the board. At the same time we expect all your old transformations to run unchanged. (if not, it’s a bug)

Get your new software fix over here: http://s3.amazonaws.com/kettle3/Kettle-3.0.0-M1.zip

IMPORTANT: from this version on, Kettle required Java 5 or higher to run!

Here are the most important changes versus v2.5:

  1. new architecture : separation of data and metadata significantly increased performance
  2. more customization options: the Spoon GUI is now easier to modify and extend
  3. new plug-in architecture: easier to plug in new steps and job entries (XML, Java 5 annotations, etc)
  4. Support for “Lazy conversion”: delaying data conversions until it’s really needed (sometimes it’s not)
  5. new “CSV Input” to read delimited files faster using NIO, includes support for lazy conversion
  6. new “Fixed Input” step to read fixed width files faster using NIO, includes support for lazy conversion and parallel read. (across both step copies and slaves server)
  7. new partitioning algorithm allowing data to be (re-)partitioned in a clustered environment.

Besides that, the code base also was reviewed and a lot of algorithms where improved.

Please note that 6 steps are not yet ported from version 2.5: Database Join, XBase Input, Add XML, Access Output, Web Service, Formula and the deprecated Aggregate Rows. All these will be available in the next milestone drop or will be available through free plug-in downloads.

Feel free to let us know how this development milestone release works out for you and how it doesn’t.
A lot of people have worked really hard to get here: let us know your success stories!

Again: DO NOT USE THIS FIRST MILESTONE RELEASE IN PRODUCTION!

All the best,

Matt

P.S. As usual: file as many bugs as you like. Thanks in advance!