GeoKettle, the open source spatial ETL tool : overview, new features and roadmap

Geospatial Business Intelligence (GeoBI) tools (geo-analytical dashboards, reporting and Spatial OLAP) present to users summarized data from operational systems in interactive maps, charts, graphs and reports. They allow decision-makers to analyze data in order to make better decisions. They rely on data warehouses which organise geo-analytical data according to dedicated data structures (e.g. star schemas). They enable a fast navigation in large data volumes in order to not hinder the analysis process flow. Some spatial ETL (Extract, Transform and Load) tools are used to build such data warehouses. GeoKettle, a spatially-enabled version of Pentaho Data Integration (Kettle) is a powerful, metadata-driven spatial ETL tool dedicated to the integration of different spatial data sources for building/updating data warehouses. It is part of the open source GeoBI software stack developed and supported by http://www.spatialytics.org.

At present, different file formats and spatial DBMS are natively supported in read/write modes. It is thus possible to build and feed complex and very large geospatial data warehouses with GeoKettle in these different DBMS. Spatial Reference Systems management and coordinates transformations have also been fully implemented and some dedicated data transformation steps can easily be designed by users as geometric objects and functions can be fully accessed by script.

This talk will present and demonstrate how GeoKettle works and its different powerful features. Based on progressive case study samples, the attendance will learn the basics of GeoKettle and will be able to assess the potential benefits of such a tool for their organisation. It will also be the opportunity to present its new features: read/write support for new data formats and DBMS (GML 3, KML 2.2, GDAL/OGR supported formats, ...), OGC SOS and WFS support, cartographic preview, spatial analysis and geospatial data processing capabilities, ...