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This step provides the ability to read data from a delimited file. It The CSV label for this step is a misnomer because you can define whatever separator you want to use, such as pipes, tabs, and semicolons; you are not constrained to using commas. Internal processing allows this step to process data quickly. Options for this step are a subset of the Text File Input step. An example of a simple CSV Input transformation can be found under ...\samples\transformations\CSV Input - Reading customer data.ktr.
This step has fewer overall options than the general Text File Input step, but it has a few key features advantages over it:
- NIO -- Native system calls for reading the file means faster performance, but it is limited to only local files currently. No VFS support.
- Parallel running -- If you configure this step to run in multiple copies or in clustered mode, and you enable parallel running, each copy will read a separate block of a single file allowing you to distribute the file reading to several threads or even several slave nodes in a clustered transformation.
- Lazy conversion -- If you will be reading many fields from the file and many of those fields will not be manipulate, but merely passed through the transformation to land in some other text file or a database, lazy conversion can prevent Kettle from performing unnecessary work on those fields such as converting them into objects such as strings, dates, or numbers.
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