About the Author

María Carina was born in a small town in the Patagonia region in Argentina. She earned her Bachelor degree in Computer Science at UNLP in La Plata and then moved to Buenos Aires where she has lived since 1994 working in IT.

She has been working as a BI consultant for the last 10 years. At the beginning she worked with Cognos suite. However, over the last three years, she has been dedicated, full time, to developing Pentaho BI solutions both for local and several Latin-American companies, as well as for a French automotive company in the last months.

She is also an active contributor to the Pentaho community.

At present, she lives in Buenos Aires, Argentina, with her husband Adrián and children Camila and Nicolás.

Writing my first book in a foreign language and working on a full time job at the same time, not to mention the upbringing of two small kids, was definitely a big challenge. Now I can tell that it's not impossible.

I dedicate this book to my husband and kids; I'd like to thank them for all their support and tolerance over the last year. I'd also like to thank my colleagues and friends who gave me encouraging words throughout the writing process.

Special thanks to the people at Packt; working with them has been really pleasant.

I'd also like to thank the Pentaho community and developers for making Kettle the incredible tool it is. Thanks to the technical reviewers who, with their very critical eye, contributed to make this a book suited to the audience.

Finally, I'd like to thank Matt Casters who, despite his busy schedule, was willing to help me from the first moment he knew about this book.