Spoon Introduction

Spoon is the graphical tool with which you design and test every PDI process. The other PDI components execute the processes designed with Spoon, and are executed from a terminal window.

Repository and files

In Spoon, you build Jobs and Transformations. PDI offers two methods to save them:

1. Files
2. Database repository
3. PDI (Enterprise) Repository (Enterprise Edition)

If you choose the database repository method, the repository has to be created the first time you execute Spoon. If you choose the files method, the Jobs are saved in files with a kjb extension, and the Transformations are in files with a ktr extension. In this tutorial you'll work with the Files method.

Starting Spoon

Start Spoon by executing Spoon.bat on Windows, or spoon.sh on Unix-like operating systems. As soon as Spoon starts, a dialog window appears asking for the repository connection data. Click the No Repository button.

The next thing you'll see is a welcome window. Go to the Edit menu and click Options.... A window will come up that enables you to change various general and visual characteristics. If you change something, it will be necessary to restart Spoon in order to see the changes applied.