Exporting / importing in the Pentaho Data Integration 4.0.1 Repository

After upgrading from PDI 3.x to 4.0.1, I've found that the old way of exporting an repository subfolder in a single step is gone. It's still important for me to be able to do this since I use separate repositories for Development, Test, and Production, and these systems must remain isolated.

As a work around, here is what I am doing for now:


You can still keep your jobs and transforms organized in repository folders/sub-folders. But you have to now export each (open) job and transformation individually using File -> Export -> To XML

I just save these files to an empty temporary directory on the file system.

Then I disconnect from the source ( development) repository and connect to the destination repository, ( ie. Test or Production).

In there, use :

Tools -> Repository -> Import Repository

In the dialog that displays:
Navigate to your temporary file system directory, and select all files you want to import. You can select more then one / all files by holding the shift key,
much like selecting multiple rows in a spreadsheet.

Click on the "Open" button

This will import your jobs and transformations at once. It will even create your sub-folders in the repository if they don't exist.

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The first step, of course, is to backup your repository. My repositories use MySQL databases, so here is the form of the command I use:

mysqldump --user=youruser --host=your.host --password=your.password --skip-opt --add-locks --create-options --databases DATABASENAME > backupfilename.out

Between release cycles, I verify my backups by using them to restore/refresh my Development and Test repositories from Production.

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I attended the Pentaho Agile-BI tour in Denver this week and met some other folks using PDI and the BI Suite, which was great. One of the discussions some of us had was about forming a Pentaho user group in the Denver / Boulder Area. If anyone is interested look me up on LinkedIn.com or send me an email and lets at least start an online discussion group.