About the Author

Rick Barton is a freelance consultant who has specialized in data integration and ETL for the last 13 years as part of an IT career spanning over 25 years.

After gaining a degree in Computer Systems from Cardiff University, he began his career as a firmware programmer before moving into Mainframe data processing and then into ETL tools in 1999.

He has provided technical consultancy to some of the UK’s largest companies, including banks and telecommunications companies, and was a founding partner of a “Big Data” integration consultancy.

Four years ago he moved back into freelance development and has been working almost exclusively with Talend Open Studio and Talend Integration Suite, on multiple projects, of various sizes, in UK. It is on these projects that he has learned many of the lessons that can be found in this, his first book.

I would like to thank my wife Ange for support and my children, Alice and Ed for putting up with my weekend writing sessions.

I’d also like to thank the guys at Packt for keeping me motivated and productive and for making it so easy to get started. Their professionalism and most especially their confidence in me, has allowed me to do something I never thought I would.