Getting Started With Talend Open Studio for Data Integration

Decent introductory text on getting started with Talend Open Studio for Data Integration. After briefly discussing installation (which was trivial in my case, since I installed on Windows 7, and the Talend website offers a separately available installation guide, user guide, and components reference guide), the author walks the reader through the Eclipse-based environment, discussing general and Talend-specific terms along the way, such as "workspace", "project", "job", "repository", "palette", and "metadata". In subsequent chapters, Bowen covers file transformation between XML and CSV files (the largest discussion in the book) and working with databases, followed by processing techniques such as filtering and sorting, managing files, job orchestration, job management, variables and contexts, and a walkthrough of some more involved flows that combine elements discussed in previous chapters.As a consultant who is just getting started with this product, has used Eclipse for many years for Java web application development, and has both used the IBM WebSphere counterpart for project work and been trained in the Informatica counterpart, the chapters that I appreciated the most are Chapter 3 ("Transforming Files"), Chapter 4 ("Working with Databases"), Chapter 5 ("Filtering, Sorting, and Other Processing Techniques"), Chapter 6 ("Managing Files"), and Chapter 7 ("Job Orchestration"). In reading through these chapters, I also developed all jobs that these chapters discuss, since it always helps me personally to actually write code rather than just read about it. Several of the job descriptions that the author presents do not provide accurate or full instructions, so actually going through the process of construction forced me to understand how everything is tied together.Unlike the first 7 chapters, however, Chapter 8 ("Managing Jobs"), Chapter 9 ("Global Variables and Contexts"), and Chapter 10 ("Worked Examples"), are not well put together, and leave something to be desired. Some jobs simply did not work as described, unlike several exercises in earlier chapters that I was able to get to work with a little extra effort by making small modifications. While I did run across some scenarios where files were missing from the Packt Publishing download that is provided with this book, the inability to import the sample Talend jobs covered in Appendix A is my only real complaint, since Chapter 10 heavily relies on these files and does not discuss how to build them step by step as is the case in the rest of this book.It is very possible that this is the case because the text assumes use of version 5.1 of the product, and I am using the latest version (5.4), so be forewarned if you want to use this book with a different version (downloads of version 5.2.3 and 5.3.2 are also currently available from the Talend website). Other reviewers here already point out the obvious. This book is the only recently published text currently available on the product, apart from the aforementioned guides which are available directly from Talend for each version of the product. But this is a book review, not a product review. In general, this text is recommended for anyone completely new to Talend Open Studio for Data Integration, and will help those familiar with other products in this space understand the basics of Talend terminology as well as how to construct integrations with files and databases (but not components involving other third-party products).This book was used to prep for the "Certified Talend Open Studio for Data Integration Consultant" exam for which I later received training from Talend and successfully passed on the first attempt. If you are interested in going this route, be aware that while the official training contains significant overlap with what is covered in this text, it is helpful to take advantage of both, although with ample experience with the product this book is likely to provide enough of a starting point to get going. Hands-on training is currently being provided for version 5.3.1, but my familiarity with the latest version did not detract from transferability of skills.

I'm a beginner to Talend and trying to ramp up for my job. The book is easy to follow and it uses very common ETL use cases for practice. I'd give this book a higher star ranking but some of the practice demos had typos and missing steps. As a beginner, these typos and missing steps made me discouraged when jobs would run with errors or not even run at all due to java scripting errors. At the end of the day, I was able to figure out most of the practice demos just from trial and error...but it did make doing some of the practice demos confusing to follow.

Talend is an ETL with an impressive array of components. Unfortunately, it seems that many of these are 'rush' jobs in order to make it appear that Talend can handle virtually any source/target of data. And the documentation is generally quite poor. Which is why external documentation is vital. This book is somewhat helpful, but, like the title says, it's just for getting started. After a couple of hours you'll wish that Talend actually had REAL documentation.

This didn't cover almost any of the topics I really needed to know about. I was hoping for something a little more comprehensive.

Very good and comrehensive book. It covers most of the topics for integration. Does not have much on MDM, but did not expect it in a first place.

Excellent book. If you follow all the exercises you will get up to speed quickly on the tool.

This book was exactly what I needed. Perfect!!!

good

For the particular task I was seeking to effect (mapping extracted CSV files to XML), the book was ideal, setting out in a step by step manner the operations required. This cut the time to produce an example working solution with real data considerably (an afternoon).On a wider level, it was a useful introduction to the scope and facilities within Talend, giving a good overview of the other integration problems it would be able to address.

I used this text in combination with the Talend On-demand Training. It is an excellent text, which covers much of the material covered in the On-demand training but at a fraction of the cost. I am quite sure that certification in the Open Studio could be achieved using ONLY this text. I would hope that a future edition would address Web Services. (Ssshh. The publisher, Packt, offers the book AND eBook for pretty much the same price as the hardcopy only on Amazon.)

le contenu est assez bien organisé, toutefois la mise en page aurait pu être améliorée,les captures d'écran qui montrent les scénarios Talend sont en noir et blancs ce qui n'est pas toujours aisé dans ce livre.avec un peu de couleur dans ce livre, j'aurais mis une étoile de plus

Although it has a heavy XML slant that was not required for the work I was doing I still found it to be a useful quick reference guide with clear explanations of what is happening when and where. I am sure it a book that I will be continually looking at when doing any TALEND work.

Only for beginners