The Pentaho Data Integration Community Edition (PDI CE), also known as Kettle, was successfully trialled in an earlier project (RMAS). It was therefore used as the basis of this part of the project. NB: For simplicity, the term PDI will be used throughout this document to refer to this software.

PDI uses the concept of Steps to represent actions performed on data, which can be arranged into transformations, allowing sequences of actions to be performed to manipulate data. Transformations can be performed in sequence in a job, meaning that modular approach can be taken to data manipulation, while maintaining the power of the actions can be performed.

A graphical interface allows the user to see how the data flows as it is handled with jobs and transformations.