Use of Clover ETL Engine

CloverDX Platform
1

Hi There,

I understand that the Clover ETL engine is an embeddable component which can be used along with other java libraries to enable ETL capabilities. I wanted to confirm my understanding of how Clover ETL can be utilized. Here are some approaches:

1. I define my own ETL definitions in an XML format. And my java libraries read those definitions and uses Clover ETL engine libraries to execute the corresponding ETL operations.
2. Instead of using my own XML format, I use Clover ETL java libraries to define the ETL definition in Clover specification and then the Clover engine can use that definition.

Are these two approaches valid?

I am trying to define a modeling component myself and the output of that modeling component will be used at run time to move data from source data sources to target data sources. Given this use case, and assuming that both the approaches are valid, which one do you recommend I follow?

Thanks,
Gaurav

2

Hi Gaurav,

I guess you understand it right. Let me just make the two approaches absolutely clear:

  1. You define your transformation graph as XML - the format of the .grf file is fixed. Then CloverETL engine allows you to parse that XML a run the transformation. Check the examples on how graph XML definitions look like.

  2. Or you can hard code the transformation as Java program… create the ETLGraph object, nodes and edges and set appropriate attribute values, etc. Then you can run this transformation.

These approaches are both valid, it is up to you whichever you choose.
However, having the transformation in XML .grf file is more manageable and our preferred way.

Hope this helps

Pavel