Creating a Kettle Repository

I wanted to create a new set of transformations that I was constructing for a project. For the same, I set up GeoKettle, a spatial ETL tool. Starting Kettle I was always wondered what the Central repository was. As I browsed through some old threads on user forums, I understood that Kettle repository was for centralizing your jobs and transformations across projects and users into a single place, so anyone could execute them.

That seemed like a good idea. However, most older posts had some concerns around its stability. Realizing that these concerns were probably five years or so old, I decided to set it up anyway.

First step is to create a Postgresql database user. For this, we need to first login as the postgres user within the Ubuntu environment and connect to the postgres

> su - postgres

Next we login to the psql environment and create a database level user called kettleadmin.

postgres > psql

psql > create user kettleadmin with password 'kettleadmin';

We then create a database called kettledb and we will grant all access to this database to user kettleadmin.

psql > create database kettledb;

psql> grant all on database kettledb to kettleadmin;

Now that we have setup the database, we can setup the kettle repository.

First step is to launch the GeoKettle shortcut. That brings the dialog box to choose your repository.

Now click the button for “New” to make a new repository, and click again on the following dialog box to create a new database connection.

On clicking the new button, another dialog box appears. Select Postgresql as the database connection type. Next, we specify the connection parameters to the database we have just created using credentials for kettleadmin as shown below

Click on “Test” to make sure the connection parameters are correct.

Once done, enter the additional details like name and description, and click “Create or Upgrade” to create the repository for the first time.

Once executed, the application will provide a list of commands executed.

Next, access the original command window and enter the default Login name and password for the database, which is admin/admin. Click on OK.

Now, on the dialog that appears, you can click on the top menu item “Repository” and click on link to “Explore Repository”.

This launches a window, where we can make changes to the current repository. The first step would be to add a new user for myself, to ensure I don't corrupt the configuration while working. I can do this by selecting the Users link and right clicking to select “New User” from the context menu.

Now I can configure this the way I want, to add new users. We are all set to move forward.