The "enterprise" versions include value-added features (see below) and services that enhance the open source products; these versions are distributed under a commercial license. Talend’s pricing model guarantees transparency and predictability: the price is not based on the volumes of data or potential additional needs for connectors or CPUs, rather it corresponds to the number of developers (Studio), the level of features (edition selected) and the subscription term. This subscription approach guarantees your return on investment: the number of licenses can be increased or decreased every year to adapt to the evolution of a project’s range and its staff. The Talend solutions are cheaper to deploy, maintain and support; they are 50 to 80% less expensive than the equivalent proprietary solutions.

The documentation of Talend Open Studio for Data Integration is available as free download in PDF format, in English and French. Two guides, the User Guide (276 pages) and the Components Reference Guide are available at: http://www.talend.com/resources/documentation.php

You can also buy a printed version of those guides on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Talend-Open-Studio-Guide-Version/dp/1453632077/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1296040035&sr=1-1

Furthermore, you can have a look at our Tutorials which are a valuable source of information!
You can access them at: http://www.talendforge.org/tutorials/menu.php

ETL (Extract, Transform & Load) is the default mode used by Talend’s data integration solutions.  It consists in processing data rows one right after the other in a flow mode.  This mode is specifically adapted for heterogeneous environments  and it enables the integration of any technology in the source and target systems (web service, files, databases, MOM, business applications, etc.). ETL mode can also be used in both batch and real time processing.  The ETL processes can be run in parallel to further accelerate their execution.

Talend’s unique architecture is not restricted to any execution engine since it generates autonomous processes that can be deployed on any server (internal or external to the company).  Also, the ETL processes can be executed as close to the data as possible minimizing access time and bandwidth consumption in addition to eliminating bottlenecks.

In the same Job, ETL can be combined with the ELT approach (see following paragraph) to obtain the highest level of performance without any architectural constraints.

Talend Open Studio simplifies versioning of items. Versioning best practices facilitate item reusability and simplify reverting to a previous development stage.

A major and minor version number is automatically set at Job creation, and can then be easily incremented over time and when updates occur by using the dedicated version control panel available directly in the Designer perspective.

All items created in Studio can be versioned: Business Models, Jobs, Routines, Metadata, and Documentation.

While developing jobs with Talend you may need to view the content of various source or target systems (files, DB, etc). The Data Viewer is directly accessible within the Studio through a simple right-click on any component. It is a convenient way to view data contained in your source/target systems regardless of their format (Excel, DB table, CSV...) while you are developing your integration processes. The Data Viewer drills down into the data source/target systems regardless of the application usually needed to open it: Notepad for txt & csv files, a SQL query browser for database tables, MS Excel for .XLS files, html browser, etc. No need to browse systems using multiple tools, the Data Viewer uses the defined source/target path settings to go straight to the actual data.

Dynamic schemas allow the designing of jobs with an unknown column structure and number. Depending on the choice of the developer, dynamic columns can be mapped directly to the target using pass-through mode. Dynamic schemas makes designing certain types of jobs easy, such as a replication scenario, simple one-to-one mapping of many columns, or when you need to migrate a whole database with hundreds of tables without knowing all of the table structures.

The Data Lineage feature helps you understand where a change occurred.

This feature is available from the Metadata Manager and can be carried out on any column of any metadata (DB, file). The result of the data lineage shows in a report which traces a change from the target end component of a Job up to the source end.

You can export this report as an HTML file.

Joblets help you factorize a job part (or Subjob) into a Joblet component. Simply select the components forming the Job part you need to reuse or want to factorize and click on the “Refactor to Joblet” menu item.

Automatically, the job design gets simplified, as the selected components are collapsed into a single Joblet component. This Joblet component can be shared through the dedicated Joblets folder in the Palette of components and is thus easily reusable in any other Job.

Joblets drastically simplify the maintenance of redundant and complex jobs.

Additionally, an “Impact Analysis” mechanism helps you find out which jobs use a defined Joblet.

Data warehousing involves the extraction and transfer of data from one or more databases into one or more target systems for analysis. However, this means the extraction and transfer of huge volumes of data which can be very consuming in both resource and time.

The ability to capture only the changed data in real time is known as Change Data Capture (CDC). Capturing changes reduces the traffic of data between systems and helps reduce ETL time.

Talend CDC architecture is based on a publisher/subscriber model. The publisher captures the data changes and makes them available to the subscribers (Talend Jobs). Subscribers utilize the data changes obtained from the publisher.

This feature detects changed records in real time, allowing the changed data to be sent immediately to Subscriber Jobs consequently cutting the time needed to load and update data during ETL or operational data integration.

Talend’s Change Data Capture features the most commonly used modes: Trigger and Redo logs. The available mode depends on the type of databases involved.

Integration processes developed with the Job designer can be deployed, updated and executed outside the Talend Studio GUI, using theCommand Line module.

Talend Command Line module provides a set of command line options that allow developers and administrators to easily perform batch operations.

Nearly all Job management functions offered through the Talend Studio and the Talend Administration Center are also available through the Command Line. This includes for example functions like: updating Job properties, promoting projects to production, exporting/importing Jobs or sets of Jobs, etc.

The Command Line feature makes it easy and quick to roll out numerous and complex Job deployments and executions including their dependencies and execution metadata.

The native command line Help provides an exhaustive list of all available commands with a short function description.

The Event Scheduler extends time-based scheduling capabilities for real-time integration.

The event listener allows the process executions to trigger an execution on an on-demand basis, or based on an event.

Events can be file-based such as file appearing, disappearing or file modification or SQL-based using “wait for” condition. Once the expected event is identified, the execution task is triggered and the job deployment and roll-out are carried out.

You can easily add new event triggers to any task, extending the industrialization of automatic executions.

The Grid Conductor module (accessible through the Job conductor) optimizes the scalability and availability of the integration processes by ensuring an optimal use of the execution grid.
The grid conductor relies on the definition of virtual servers, which group available resources, regardless of the system type (CPU, OS...).

Tasks are assigned to virtual servers of the Grid Conductor rather than to a single execution server.

Via a constant monitoring of the resources available on the execution servers, Grid Conductor guarantees that all jobs execute smoothly at triggering time and fully leverage available resources, removing bottlenecks created by the traditional single-server approach.

This alleviates any concerns related to resource preemption when a large number of jobs run concurrently, or when non-dedicated servers are used. Grid Conductor also provides automatic fail-over in the event an execution resource becomes unavailable.