Talend Data Preparation Free Desktop

Talend Data Preparation Free Desktop is a segment of Talend’s free open source ETL software. While, unlike Talend Open Studio, it is not a complete ETL tool, it provides some useful tools which can assist with the data preparation process.

Talend Free Desktop is a browser-based tool which provides a GUI for the extraction and transformation part of the ETL process. It can assist in cleaning and preparing data to use either in Talend Open Studio, or with any other application, and create macro-like processes which can be run on similar datasets.

Talend Free Desktop allows users to perform many tasks similar to what can be done within most spreadsheet software, however it is designed to be more intuitive, and without the need to manually create formulas. This tool makes it possible to do quickly what typically would have required doing a lot of manual cleanup and custom formulas. In addition to this, it allows quick data visualization of patterns, values, and automatically generates charts on-the-fly.

It has some tools which will help automatically detect anomalies and offer suggestions, and can also provide some fairly clear graphical representation of variations within datasets, and to quickly visualize results and identify frequencies of inconsistent data.

While performing these processes, macro-like “recipes” are dynamically created recording each step along the way. These resulting recipes can be quickly applied to similar datasets to repeat these actions.

All changes and modifications of data within Talend Data Preparation Free Desktop happen on the fly. No changes are made to original data, and any results are stored in active memory, until exported. The resulting data can be exported into standard xls or csv, and tableau formats.

Talend Data Preparation free desktop provides a number of features that make cleaning up and preparing data for further analysis easy and fast.

Below are some examples of ways that data can be cleaned up, organized and normalized either for quick viewing, exported for more detailed analysis in other software.

Built-in formulas

With a spreadsheet, typically there are a few built-in functions, such as summarization and formatting. Most other functions require constructing a formula. With Talend Free Desktop, most of these exist as a selectable list of common tools, which can be applied by choosing a column and clicking on the function. Finding the correct function is relatively easy. For most functions, if you know what you are looking for, typing a word or two will narrow down the list to find the correct tool. Choosing this function will automatically apply the rule to a selected column or row.

Data Aggregation

Data on a spreadsheet can quickly show summaries of items within categories, and will quickly generate bar charts for quick data visualization. Below is an example of a summary of activity per occupation.

Data Summaries

Quick summaries of data can be viewed by selecting a column. The counts of items within that column are show in a chart on the right.

Data Standardization

Talend Data Preparation Free Desktop can automatically identify data types, and will display the type at the top of the table column. If the data type is incorrect, it is easy to change with a couple of clicks. For data types such as date, by using built-in pattern recognition, this software can help remove the painstaking and error-prone process of associated with manually checking for incorrect or inconsistent formats. Talend Free Desktop will display the different pattern structures, and can help one identify outliers, and automatically change these to a specified format.

Automated Data Lookup

Crosslinking data from one spreadsheet or table to another is simply a matter of choosing an associated dataset which shares a column with your original sheet. For instance, as a direct marketer, if you have customers who have responded from specific states but you would like to quickly see response rates for a region, choosing a lookup sheet will automatically recognize relevant data from an external data source to bring necessary information into your current worksheet.

Recipes (Macros)

Any actions taken through manipulation of a sheet become automatically stored in “recipes” which are a series of steps taken on a specific dataset. If there is another set of data delivered in the same format, such as sales within a different quarter, applying the same recipe to the sheet will run through the same data preparation procedures in seconds.

Talend Data Preparation Desktop can be a beneficial part of an arsenal of ETL tools for direct marketers. While it is not a full ETL tool in itself, it can handle quite a bit of the data preparation in a simple and easy to comprehend way. Clean and organized data can make the other steps of extracting, transforming and loading information a good deal easier. While true data analysis may require many specialized skills, if the front end of the organization can organize information quickly and at their fingertips, this can improve everything such as managing sales prospects to making the work of the back end of the business that much easier

Talend Data Preparation Free Desktop comes highly recommended as a tool in a direct marketing organization's arsenal.

• CSV
• Excel
• Tableau