Product Overview

5. Data transformation

How about rule transformations?

Using ETL4ALL, it is possible to specify that transformations are executed only when certain conditions are met. Furthermore, transformations can contain conditional operations.

What transformation functionality is supported by ETL4ALL?

ETL4ALL supports all functions in XSLT 1.0 and XPath. It contains a library of about one hundred predefined functions for mathematical, alphanumerical, time and date, statistical, sorting, conditional and relational operations. This library can be easily adapted and extended.

Is there intermediate storage support between processing steps?

Intermediate storage between processing steps is possible in relational databases, XML databases and files. This makes ETL4ALL a suitable tool to both populate your datamart, and perform analysis on it.

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6. Metadata management

What about the ETL4ALL metadata repository?

ETL4ALL 2.4.0 has an XMI compliant metadata repository. XMI is a standard format for representing metadata and data. As a consequence, ETL4ALL's metadata can be imported into any XMI compliant application.

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7. Development environment

Does the ETL4ALL client application offer debugging functionality?

Easy debugging is one of the key features of the ETL4ALL Client. This is realized by defining mappings on metadata and selecting data sources afterwards. In practice, this means that one creates a metadata mapping. This mapping is tested and debugged after linking test data to the source metadata in the mapping. After debugging, the real data set is associated to the mapping. Furthermore, debugging is simplified by allowing inspection of intermediate transformation results. An intermediate transformation result is the result of any transformation that is part of the complete chain of transformations that is executed.

Does the ETL4ALL client application allow scheduling?

Yes, ETL4ALL 2.4.0 does support scheduling.

Does ETL4ALL offer transactional support?

Transactional support is not present in ETL4ALL 2.4.0. It is however scheduled for future versions.

Do transformation changes in one place take effect at other places?

ETL4ALL automatically propagates changes in one transformation to all other transformations that use the affected one.

Does ETL4ALL allow version management for the metadata, transformations, etc?

Version management is not integrated in ETL4ALL 2.4.0. As metadata and transformations are stored as XML files, one can use any version management tool in combination with ETL4ALL.

Is it possible to produce business reports with ETL4ALL?

One has 3 alternatives when producing reports using ETL4ALL.

  • ETL4ALL can generate MS Excel output. In many cases MS Excel suffices for management reporting.
  • ETL4ALL 2.4.0 integrated with JFreeReport. This is an open source report generator providing the user with the possibility of generating more complex reports than with MS Excel.
  • As ETL4ALL can produce output for any kind of database, this output can be used as input for any existing third-party reporting tool.

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8. ETL administration

How about the ETL4ALL administration?

All processes are centrally co-ordinated, initiated and logged at the ETL4ALL Server, wherever they might be executed.

Does ETL4ALL offer detailed error processing mechanisms?

ETL4ALL offers detailed and configurable error logging mechanisms. For more details, see the question "Is ETL reporting provided".

Is detailed audit possible using ETL4ALL?

ETL4ALL offers simple audit functionality. The system can be configured to log the data source, data target and processing time for any transformation process. This information is centralized in the ETL4ALL server.

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9. Background topics

What is an application server? Where is it used in ETL4ALL?

An application server is a program that handles all application operations between users and an organization's backend business applications or databases. Application servers are typically used for complex transaction-based applications. To support high-end needs, an application server has to have built-in redundancy, monitors for high-availability, high-performance distributed application services and support for complex database access. ETL4ALL uses an application server to embed its SOAP server application, its data layer entities and its transformation engines, when used in a client-server configuration. When used in the standalone configuration, ETL4ALL does not need an application server.

What is XML? Where is it used in ETL4ALL?

XML stands for Extensible Mark-up Language, a specification developed by the W3C. XML is a pared-down version of SGML, designed especially for Web documents. It allows designers to create their own customized tags, enabling the definition, transmission, validation, and interpretation of data between applications and between organizations. ETL4ALL uses it as its internal data format. The reason for this is that ETL4ALL uses XSLT to perform data transformations. XSLT transformations require XML data as input.

What is XSLT? Why is it used in ETL4ALL?

XSLT is the short for Extensible Style Language Transformation, the language used in XSL style sheets to transform XML documents into other XML documents. An XSL processor reads the XML document and follows the instructions in the XSL style sheet, then it outputs a new XML document or XML-document fragment. This is extremely useful in e-commerce, where the same data need to be converted into different representations of XML. Not all companies use the exact same programs, applications and computer systems. XSLT Recommendation was written and developed by the XSL Working Group and became ratified by the W3C on November 16, 1999. ETL4ALL uses XSLT to do all of its data transformations. As XSLT is rapidly gaining importance, lots of XSLT transformation engines exist. This offers tuning possibilities to ETL4ALL.

What is TrAX? Why is it important for ETL4ALL?

TrAX stands for Transformation API for XML. It is the standard API that can be used to access almost any transformation engine. ETL4ALL used the TrAX API to execute XSLT transformations. As a consequence, one can plug any TrAX compliant XSLT engine into the ETL4ALL Server. This results in a great flexibility towards ETL4ALL system tuning.

What will be the next question about ETL4ALL?

That is up to you! Please submit it to etl4allsupport@ikan.be

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