Data Integration Question

[jerdoggmckoy]

I am just now learning about the business intelligence software programs, and I don't quite fully understand all that goes into setting up Pentaho or anything else. I have been interviewing potential developers who have experience with Pentaho Community. I have given them my 4 planned sources of data, which come in the form of API keys such as Google Analytics, Mongoose Metrics, MailChimp, etc, and two of them made a similar statement:

"Pentaho Data Integration does not have plugins for these sources."

and

"Pentaho Enterprise Edition comes with a special plugin for Google Analytics. The free community edition of Pentaho does not support this plugin. The same should be true for Google Adwords. I am not sure about the other two."

Can someone clarify if this is correct? I figured all I needed was the API key and that Pentaho would receive and format the data based on set up. Thanks in advance for any help.

[phyto]

There is an open source google analytics plugin, used it myself: http://type-exit.org/adventures-with...in-for-kettle/
Not sure about AdWords

[MattCasters]

Even if you are missing a pre-packaged plugin, you can always use the webservices behind the websites listed.
I'm pretty sure PDI can call a REST service or do a HTTP request, assemble some XML and get some back, if you know what I mean.

[jerdoggmckoy]

Thanks for the help! Just to be clear, it sounds as if there will either be pre-existing plugins for some of the items I need. But if there aren't, then I can just have someone develop that part of Pentaho, or a plugin of some sort, to receive data from 3rd party API sources?

[MattCasters]

Jeremy, to be absolutely clear, there are a sufficient number of generic components in PDI (REST lookup, HTTP Client, and so on) to access cloud based services without the need for specific steps in Pentaho Data Integration.
Would it be easier with a nice GUI wrapped around the web services of a certain website? Sure! But that doesn't mean everyone needs to demand a particular step for every website out there. It's not like assembling the XML for a request is an extremely painful thing to do. Take a look at the annotated web service example in the samples/transformations folder of PDI to get an idea of what's involved: 3 steps, that's all.

So yes, the developer need to learn complex IT concepts like XML or JSON but let's be honest here: he needs to learn those things anyway if you want to getting a job working for you.