Use the PDI client perspectives
Pentaho Data Integration (PDI) empowers you with tools that include ETL and scheduling in one unified environment — the PDI client interface. This integrated environment enables you to work in close cooperation with business users to build business intelligence solutions more quickly and efficiently.
When you are working in the PDI client, you can change perspectives to easily switch back and forth from:
Designing ETL jobs and transformations, and
Scheduling jobs and transformations.
As users provide you with feedback about how the data is presented to them, you can also quickly make iterative changes to your data directly using our data inspection tools in the PDI client.
From within the PDI client, you can change perspectives using the Perspective icon in the toolbar.
Perspectives in PDI help you focus how you work with different tasks.
Data Integration perspective
You can use the Data Integration perspective to develop ETL programs known as transformations and jobs.
Consider the following example and table as a guide to the major sections of the Data Integration perspective.
In the table below, match the numbered items in the example illustration above to reference the toolbars, buttons, and areas on the PDI client.
Item
Feature
Description
1
Toolbar
Use this toolbar to access commonly performed actions: - New file button ( 
) to create a new job, transformation, database connection, or slave server.
Open file button (
) to open a transformation or job from a file.Explore Repository button (
) to explore the repositories.Save button (
) to save the current transformation or job to a file or repository.Save As button (
) to save the transformation or job under a different file name or type.Perspectives button (
) to switch between the different perspectives:Data Integration Perspective: Create ETL transformations and jobs.
Schedule Perspective: Manage scheduled ETL activities on the Pentaho Server.
2
Connect button
Use this button to access the menu to create and connect to repositories for central storage of your ETL jobs and transformations.
3
Sub-toolbar
Use this toolbar to perform transformation or job actions:- Run button ( 
) to run a transformation or job:
- Run: Runs the current transformation or job from an XML file or a repository.
- Run Options: Sets the Run Options and then runs the current transformation or job from an XML file or a repository.
Pause button (
) to pause a running transformation or job.Stop button (
) to stop a running transformation or job:Stop: Stops the transformation or job immediately.
Stop input processing: Stops the input steps to the transformation or job, while allowing any records already retrieved or initiated to be processed and then stopped.
Preview button (
) to run the transformation in preview mode to examine the rows produced by the selected steps.Debug button (
) to run the transformation in debug mode to troubleshoot execution errors.Replay button (
) to replay the processing of a transformation.Verify button (
) to verify the transformation.Analyze button (
) to run an impact analysis on the database.SQL button (
) to generate the SQL that is needed to run the loaded transformation.Explore DB button (
) to launch the Database Explorer to perform actions such as preview data, run SQL queries, and generate DDL.Results button (
) to show the Execution Results pane.Lock button (
) to lock the transformation.
4
Explore pane
Use this pane to access the Design and View tabs:- The Design tab provides a list of steps or entries that are used to build transformations or jobs.
The View tab provides information about available database connections and the steps and hops used for the transformation or job.
5
Canvas
Use this canvas for designing and building transformations and jobs for the ETL activities you want to perform.
See Data Integration perspective in the PDI client for more details and instructions.
Scheduler perspective
You can plan when to run transformations and jobs and set timed intervals to automatically send the output to your preferred destinations. See Schedule a transformation or job for more details.
The table below outlines the features in the Scheduler perspective. See Scheduler perspective in the PDI client for details.
1
Perspectives icon
Allows you to switch between perspectives in PDI.
2
Scheduler toolbar
Provides single-click access to common actions such as edit, refresh, enable, disable, or delete.
3
Schedules table
Contains a list of schedules.
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