We are delighted to introduce two new colleagues, both of whom joined us on May 1 as Talend consultants. What did they do during their first weeks at cimt, how did they experience it and how was their first introduction to Talend?

A brief introduction: Femke, 28, has a background in Artificial Intelligence and business analysis, and David, 29, has a background in Business Intelligence reporting. Neither had any previous hands-on experience with data integration in Talend, but they both had an idea of its purpose. They have now completed an intensive familiarization period and a first introduction to Talend, about which they are happy to tell you more.

In-house architecture training

Femke and David started their first week at cimt with an “in-house Talend architecture walkthrough” for a first introduction to Talend: for two days they practiced manually installing and configuring all the Talend components in a test environment. Femke: ‘This is not simply about installing the various components of the Talend Platform, but mainly about ensuring the right conditions for your environment, setting paths to libraries, testing connections, using a command line interface, etc.’ David adds: ‘It was quite tough, because it involves a lot of new and also quite heavy material. However, the use of Talend and working with the tool was not too bad. The intention is that the knowledge they have gained about the underlying architecture will help them track down errors in the future.

Online data integration course

Then they started working on both the Basic and Advanced courses of Talend Data Integration through Talend’s own Learning Portal. David says, “The course starts with a description of the different modules of Talend and about the ‘use and need’ for data integration. After that, however, it quickly goes into working with the tool and you soon build your first job that prints, how could it be otherwise, a “Hello World” message in the console.

The training courses are offered as a combination of theory and practice, says Femke. After first going through a number of slides you successively apply the knowledge in a practice environment. The level is appropriate for someone who already has some basic knowledge of data management. Using appealing assignments you will quickly run through a large number of applications within the Data Integration product. From reading files and databases to setting up Change Data Capture and Parallelization.

Working with Talend Data Integration is fairly quick to learn, according to both new colleagues. ‘Once you are familiar with a few basic concepts, you can quickly get to grips with even unfamiliar applications and you click your way through everything easily,’ says David. What is particularly striking is the emphasis on reusability and the logical structure of work. The application of once defined schemas and context variables are very important in this.’

Expanding knowledge and cooperating with German colleagues

David and Femke didn’t just take Talend’s online training courses. In fact, cimt itself also offers training courses for Talend Data Integration. ‘When the basic and advanced training was given to our German colleagues in Cologne, we went along,’ says Femke. The cimt training courses focus more on the most common use cases from practice. It was good to learn the same material again from a different context. David adds: ‘It was also nice to get to know our German colleagues. We were able to work well together and have a nice Kölsch in the evening in a Brauhaus. Now when we give support or ask someone via e-mail, we also have a face to go with the name.’

First milestone achieved!

In the meantime, we can announce that both Femke and David have obtained the Certified Talend Data Integration Consultant certificate and are eager to start working for our customers. We hope to see you soon!