Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics Reviews

It allows for rapid prototyping of a wide array of ETL workloads.

Support for common Hadoop utilities can be expanded, such as bulk load with composite row keys for HBase, and include drivers for Impala out-of-the-box. A richer interface to Hive could also be beneficial as we currently have to go through a raw connection and execute SQL scripts, for which some syntax is not respected.

As of version 6, there are also some new issues introduced that pose a bit of an annoyance:

1) On kettle's ramp up - log4j errors

2) IBM Websphere MQ Producer - variable substitution for the URL does not work - you have to hardcode.

3) shared.xml for DB connections - variable substitution for connection properties does not work - have to hardcode things like Kerberos principal for a Hive/Impala connection.

We had no issues deploying it.

The robustness of this solution in a production cluster (>30 nodes) remains to be seen.

First of all, the ease of deployment. I’m pretty sure that almost anyone could do simple transformations without having any knowledge of  IT. Thanks to its graphical interface this tool is just drag and click. Another advantage, is that it fits everywhere. You can connect it to Big Data sources, relational databases, and all types of files. If the developer missed something, you can try finding it in the marketplace or quickly develop it yourself, because it is opensource. 

We use it almost everywhere, for creating data marts, data warehouses, and implementing BI reporting tools. We also build our Customer Centralized File and Data Quality Studio using it. What’s more, we use it for small solutions too, i.e. if we want to quickly export data from database to .xlsx. We also develop our own plugins for PDI and put them into the marketplace. 

A big advantage, but also a problem, is that it is open source. Almost anyone can develop their own Pentaho code and release it. Now, Pentaho is a little messy, and some parts of it are super new and some look like it were developed at the beging. I think that developers should stop inventing new parts of it, and it can take a while to clean the code and optimize the older parts of it. Some old plugins, after a long time, still doesn’t work properly enough.

I've been using it for four years, and when I started using it I was in college. I quickly found that PDI with my text search analytic plug-in is useful for preparing notes for classes. When I was bored I came up with a funny tool. It was collecting data from all my roommates about what they need from shop and it was sending notifications to peoples phones who were going to the shop.

We have never had any problems with deployment.

There are some with stability. As I said before there are some small bugs but it’s Pentaho you can always find workaround for it.

With the Pentaho Community version you just download it, unpack, and it should be running. If not you should also install Java. 

Customer service isn’t needed. Every problem solution is on the internet. If not,  you can post it to community forum and you will get an immediate answer, but I have never had to post a new topic.

Straightforward. You just need to unzip file and you can already run it. There is also some setup if you need. It’s very simple you just need to edit three files in notepad. 

I did this myself and we do it for other companies. All installations are easy, and you do not need to be an IT magician. 

There is a Community Edition which is free. There is also an Enterprise licence but the price varies depending on the server hardware configuration and the purpose of use (BigData, Hadoop, etc.).

I had the chance to test SAS Data Integration but I didn’t fall in love with it like I did with PDI. I think that PDI is easier to use and you can do much more with PDI than with SAS.

The tool is excellent, and almost everyone can use it. You just need to take it out of the box and run. There is no limit to the application – you can do everything with it. However, it still has a lot of faults. Not every component runs as you wish to. Always look for solutions on the Internet. There are many problems and build transformations/jobs that are already fixed. 

• Pentaho Kettle has a very intuitive and easy to use graphical user interface (GUI)
• It is possible to understand how to develop an ETL solution even when using it for the first time
• The Community Edition is free and very efficient
• They have versions for Windows, Linux and Mac
• Large selection of options.

We have developed some complex ETL processes for some clients and they are very satisfied with the results.

They could improve the logging generator. Sometimes the error description is so generic that it is not possible to detect the problem.

We've used it for three years.

There were no issues with the deployment.

There were no issues with the stability.

There have been no issues scaling it.

I use the Community Edition without support or customer service. I recommend the Pentaho Community Forums for technical issues.

I have used Informatica PowerCenter, which is an excellent solution. However, it´s not so easy to use as Pentaho kettle.

The initial setup is straightforward. All you need to do is to download it, unzip the file into a folder and execute the Spoon.bat (for Windows) or Spoon.sh (for Linux) to start the graphical user interface (GUI).

In-house. The implementation is very simple. Data developers will not encounter difficulties to implement ETL solutions.

The community edition is free. If you need a full BI solution, I would recommend the enterprise edition.

Pentaho Kettle is an excellent solution to implement ETL process.

It's an ETL Platform including Big Data enablement. It's the most easy to use, extend and deploy. It helps to connect to various data sources including all available databases.  

We also use Pentaho Analyzer which is an ad-hoc analytics tool built on Mondrian OLAP server that enables the end user to slice and dice the data in various patterns.

We Implement Pentaho for data warehouses and BI features for our various customers. No software can give as complete functionality for fulfilling end user requirements as Pentaho. As well as this, Pentaho offers a flexible platform which enables us to extend the tool to any of the end user's requirement. 

Another impressive feature is the Big Data implementation/integration is very quick and simple without the need to write any code. This enabled our clients to get maximum ROI with in a short period.

Pentaho Dashboard Designer - needs an improvement on the various features of the Dashboards, since there are CTools available and which help to fulfil the gaps, but it needs developers involvement. A full fledged Dashboard designer to perform all the functions of what we do in CDE/CDF would be a great improvement for Pentaho.

Build Process - an inbuilt build process would provide an advantage to migrate between DEV-QA-UAT-PROD, currently it is mostly performed manually.

Data Profiling - including data profiling as part of PDI would be a great improvement to the platform and helps customers to save a lot of effort/cost of data quality.

We are Pentaho Service Providers and have implemented more than 130 projects in Pentaho. We are not direct customers of Pentaho but we recommend Pentaho to our clients if it meets their requirements.

We had no issues with the deployment.

There have been no stability issues.

We have not had any issues scaling it for our customers.

It is quick and easy to implement.

Pentaho is available both in Community (Free) and Enterprise Edition (Subscription based) depending upon your budget.

One of the best feature to lookout in this platform is its flexibility in enhancing or adapting to your requirements. Implementation can be very quick, you can enable few dashboards and analytics to your organization in a week's time.

It allows for very quick development due to the intuitive interface. Compared to other ETL tools like Powercenter, SSIS and SAS DI Studio it excels in rapid development cycles.

It gave ‘out-of-the-box’ widgets for reading XML and JSON interfaces which would otherwise have to be build from scratch.

PDI excels at the development part. Administration and monitoring are pretty weak and basic. But, I must say I have been spoiled with the great capabilities that Powercenter offers ‘out-of-the-box’ The Pentaho development team seems to rely very heavily on Linux/Unix for the admin part. Debugging could be enhanced with better feed-back.

We used PDI 4.3 in a pilot against SSIS during 2013 for a couple of months. In 2014 I have the 4.4 version on a daily basis within a production environment for exactly one year. We also looked into the commercial front-end solution and found this to be too much of a collection of loosely connected applications

There have been no deployment issues.

Stability is a bit of an issue. The GUI quite often ‘freezes’ and the is no alternative to killing the session. Very frequent saving is in order

There have been no issues with scalability.

The community site is pretty brilliant. Every technical component is handled on its own Wiki page. You can even look into the scrum backlog of the dev. team. Absolutely amazing.

Heavy ETL solutions were simply too expensive and the SSIS alternative is simply too hidious to consider. It took at least three times as much time to develop the same ETL proces with SSIS as compared to Pentaho. (And having to deal with the abject Microsoft ‘debugging’.

Incredibily easy. Just unpack, make sure you got the right drivers installed, and beware of other Java applications running.

We simply did everything ourselves, with a little aid from the community.

Make sure Pentaho solutions are still available as they were prior to the commercial take-over. Administration is not the best developed component . The ETL is brilliant. Make sure that the admin part is covered.

The best benefit of the product is that it is easy to use and to understand.

We have a huge amount of data that needs to be cleaned and made more valuable for our organization. This Data Integration helps us to achieve that goal.

I have used multiple versions of this product. The initial version we were on was v3.2 and we were had multiple issues, but currently don't find any issues as a blocker. In general, it would be good if we could get better performance from this product.

We haven't had any issues with deployment.

We haven't had any issues with stability except for those described in the Areas for Improvement.

We haven't had any issues with scalability.

There are other products out there, but I feel that this is the best one.

Data transformation within Pentaho is a nice feature that they have and that I value.

Integration between databases and data import for a BI solution.

I would like to see more improvements with AS400 DB2. I journalled the tables/instance and the data migration is too slow if I compare it with other databases.

There were no issues with the deployment.

Until now, the stability of Pentaho is great. I've already tested various scenarios and I didn't feel a loss of performance.

There have been no issues so far in scaling the product.

I used self-learning to implement it and found that the tool is very easy to understand. For some things, I looked at YouTube videos for conceptual ideas during the planning phase.

I did it myself.

Its ability of blending data and the dashboarding with C*TOOLS for creating responsive single page apps.

We have been able to expose data services through the use of CDA relying on the same database as the reporting tools, thus avoiding inconsistencies among the data shown by reports and data acquired by external systems.

The User Console, aka workspace, and the development of dashboards. They work but they require some programmer skills. This means a continous application management on behalf of IT dept.

I've used it for six years.

There were issues, but they were solved with help from tech support.

There were issues, but they were solved with help from tech support.

There were issues, but they were solved with help from tech support.

It depends, as it takes usually a long time, and some answers are just a way to acquire time and the commitment seems poor. However, when you finally get to an engineer your are likely to have your problem solved in a few days.

We used Microstrategy, Cognos, and Business Objects. The pricing was the key driver, but also the open source licensing which made us think we would have been able to develop on our own improvements. This didn't happen because primarily of the few resources we effectively put on development.

It's complex because of the lack of documentation and the absence of an installer for Linux.

We did it in-house one, and we had to hire some developers for some months with Java skills.

Have a vision, and do not let yourself be guided by the technology.