Ab initio Basic tutorial

Ab initio

It is one of the important ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) tool for analyzing the data for business purpose

 

ETL process
 
Extraction: 

In this process the required data is extracted from the source file like text file, database and other source system.


Transformation:
 
In this process the extracted data is converted into the required format for analyzing the data .It involves the following tasks:

• Applying Business rules (derivations, calculating new values and dimensions)

• Cleaning (e.g. Male to 'M ', Female to 'F')

• Filtering (only the selected columns to load)

• Joining together the data from the multiple source files (lookup, Merge) and etc

Loading:
 
Loading the data into the data warehouse or data repository other application



Ab Initio software consists of two main programs


Co-Operating System, which your system administrator installs on a host Unix or Windows NT server, as well as on processing computers. Layered on the top of the operating system.


Unites a network of computing resources into a data-processing system with scalable performance

Co-Operating system runs on …

        Sun Solaris  2.6, 7, and 8 (SPARC)

        IBM AIX 4.2, and 4.3

        Hewlett-Packard HP-UX 10.20, 11.00, and 11.11

        Digital UNIX V4.0D (Rev. 878) and 4.0E (Rev. 1091)



The Ab-Initio Co-Operating System provides the following features: 

•  Manage and run Ab-Initio graphs and control the ETL processes

•  Provides Ab-Initio extensions to the operating system

•  ETL processes monitoring and debugging

•  Metadata management and interaction with the EME

• The Graphical Development Environment (GDE), which  install on  PC (GDE Computer) and configure to communicate with the host.

GDE is a graphical application for a developer which is used for designing and running Ab-Initio graphs. It also provides:

•  The ETL process in Ab Initio is represented by Ab Initio graphs.

• Graphs are formed by components (from the standard components library or custom), flows (data streams) and parameters.A user-friendly front end for designing Ab Initio ETL graphs

It allows user to create the graphs here. It is very easy to use. During running of the graph' GDE convert the graph into the shell script which is run in the Unix server