Writing an Excel file with several sheets

Writing an Excel file with Kettle has a lot in common with writing a text file. Except for a couple of settings specific to Excel files, configuring an Excel Output step is quite similar to configuring a Text file output step. One of the differences is that when you write an Excel file, you add a sheet to the file. What if you want to write more than one sheet in the same file?

Suppose you have a data source containing books and their authors and you want to create an Excel file with two sheets. In the first sheet, you want the authors and in the second, the books' titles. This recipe teaches you how to do this.

Getting ready

In order to run this recipe, you will need a database with books and authors with the structure described in Appendix A, Data Structures.

How to do it...

Carry out the following steps, in order to create the sheet with the authors' details:

1. Create a new transformation.

2. Drop a Table Input step into the canvas, in order to read the author...