Executing a PDI transformation as part of a Pentaho process

Everything in the Pentaho platform is made of action sequences. An action sequence is, as its name suggests, a sequence of atomic actions that together accomplish small processes. Those atomic actions cover a broad spectrum of tasks, for example, getting data from a table in a database, running a piece of JavaScript code, launching a report, sending e-mails, or running a Kettle transformation.

For this recipe, suppose that you want to run the sample transformation to get the current weather conditions for some cities. Instead of running this from the command line, you want to interact with this service from the PUC. You will do it with an action sequence.

Getting ready

In order to follow this recipe, you will need a basic understanding of action sequences and at least some experience with the Pentaho BI Server and Pentaho Design Studio, the action sequences editor.

Before proceeding, make sure that you have a Pentaho BI Server running...