Apache Hop for Windchill Data Transformations and Maintenance Activities

 Apache Hop is essentially an UI based, open source ETL tool with multiple advanced features to orchestrate data. An ETL tool simply takes in the data maps it and pushes out the result.

Pipelines

A chain of functional robots defined in a workflow in Hop is called a pipeline. I did a simple ETL function to transform a raw CSV from a legacy system to give me WTPart output which I can feed WBM with quite some ease.

I could

1. generate sequences
2. write logic to link Master to child versions/Identifiers
3. Add external Java expressions to limit row field lengths, compare field values with logic.
4. I was able to send the data directly to the staging database

I got what one would need from an ETL tool. This got me thinking, what makes Hop different.

Here are some use cases that Hop can achieve

1. Take attachments from emails and transform them. e.g (1) send a CSV file via email, Apache Hop will listen to it, transform the data in the attachment.
2. Run programs Scheduler. Utilities can be scheduled to execute directly in pipelines. (2)When the CSV is transformed kick off the windchill command to load this data, maybe run a load from file command. or normalize this data in WBM and run the loader.Yes, all commands can be fired through pipelines and automated.

Based on these 2 use cases , Hop was not only able to transform the data in an efficient algorithm but I was able to automate the migration and loading of the data into Windchill providing a higher rate of efficiency and time management.