Apache Hop – Detailed Technical Overview

1. What is Apache Hop?

Apache Hop (Hop Orchestration Platform) is an open-source data orchestration and data
integration platform designed to help data engineers build, design, execute, and monitor
ETL/ELT pipelines visually or programmatically.

Hop focuses on:

• Low-code/no-code pipeline design

• Reusable components & metadata-driven pipelines
• Scalable orchestration across local, cloud, and distributed engines
• Modularity + extensibility
• Separation of pipelines, workflows, and metadata

Hop is the spiritual successor to Pentaho Kettle (PDI), rebuilt under Apache from scratch with
modern architecture and extensibility.

2. Key Concepts in Apache Hop

Hop’s architecture revolves around three core elements:

2.1 Pipelines
• Define data transformations (similar to ETL jobs)
• Executed step-by-step
• Handle: extraction → processing → loading
• No-code/low-code visual design
• Exportable and version-controlled

Pipelines contain steps (nodes) connected by hops (edges).

2.2 Workflows
• Define orchestration logic
• Control pipeline sequencing
• Include branching, looping, conditional execution
• Manage dependencies, error handling, and notifications

Workflows orchestrate pipelines, scripts, or external processes.

2.3 Metadata
Reusable and centrally stored:

• Database connections
• File definitions
• Variables and parameters
• Environment configurations
• Runtime profiles

This makes Hop highly configurable and portable.

3. Apache Hop Architecture

3.1 Modular, Plugin-Based Architecture
Every feature is a plugin:

• Input/output steps
• Orchestration steps
• Transformations
• Metadata objects
• Execution engines

This architecture allows flexibility to extend Hop for custom enterprise needs.

3.2 Execution Engines

Hop runs pipelines across different engines:

• Local engine
• Apache Spark
• Apache Flink
• Google Dataflow (Beam)
• Kubernetes (via containers)

This allows scaling from local development → distributed big-data pipelines.

3.3 Project & Environment System

• Introduced to solve multi-environment instability
 • Enables clean separation between dev/test/prod environments
• Each environment has its own variables, configs, and metadata

4. Features of Apache Hop

4.1 Visual Pipeline Builder
Drag-and-drop interface to build:

• ETL transformations
• CDC pipelines
• File ingestion workflows
• API-to-database pipelines
• Data quality transformations
• Orchestration workflows

4.2 Metadata-Driven Development

Everything in Hop is metadata:

• Makes pipelines reusable & portable

• Easy versioning (Git integration)
• Parameter-driven pipeline execution

4.3 Multi-Engine Execution (Apache Beam)

Run the same pipeline on:

• Local machine
• Spark cluster
• Flink cluster
• Dataflow (GCP)
• Kubernetes

This future-proofs your pipeline deployment strategy.

4.4 Strong Data Integration Support

Hop supports:

• Databases (JDBC, NoSQL)

 • File formats: CSV, JSON, Avro, Parquet, ORC
• Cloud storage: S3, GCS, Azure Blob
• Streaming systems: Kafka, MQTT
• REST & SOAP APIs
• Hadoop ecosystem: HDFS, Hive, HBase

4.5 Reusable Components

• Sub-pipelines
• Workflow actions
• Shared database connections
• Shared schemas
• Parameterized pipelines

4.6 Monitoring & Logging

Hop provides:

• Real-time execution logs

• Statistics tracking
• Error handling with retries
• Audit trails
• Execution auditing for governance

4.7 Extensibility
You can add:

• Custom pipeline steps

• Custom metadata loaders
• Custom actions and connectors

5. Integration and Ecosystem Support

5.1 Big Data Integration
Hop integrates with:

• Apache Hadoop
• Apache Spark
• Apache Flink
 • Apache Beam
• HDFS, Hive, HBase
• Kafka ingestion and streaming pipelines

5.2 Cloud Platforms

Supports:

• AWS (S3, Glue, Redshift)

• Azure (Blob, ADLS, SQL DB)
• GCP (BigQuery, GCS)

5.3 DevOps & CI/CD

Hop integrates with:

• Git
• Jenkins
• GitLab CI
• Airflow
• Kubernetes

Pipelines as code → easy versioning + automation.

6. Apache Hop Use Cases

6.1 ETL/ELT Data Pipelines
• Extract from operational systems
• Transform (clean, validate, standardize)
• Load into warehouses/lakes

6.2 Data Lake Ingestion

• Cloud object storage ingestion
• Parquet/ORC file transformations
• Metadata-driven ingestion patterns

6.3 Real-Time Data Processing

• Kafka streaming
 • CDC ingestion
• Operational analytics

6.4 Data Quality & Governance

• Data validation
• Profiling
• Matching and standardization

6.5 Orchestration Pipelines

• Run external jobs
• Trigger notebooks/scripts
• Multi-step workflow coordination
• Error handling and alerts

6.6 Machine Learning Pipeline Support

• Data preparation
• Feature engineering pipelines
• Integration with Python and Spark ML

7. Advantages of Apache Hop

7.1 Modern Successor of PDI/Kettle

• Rewritten architecture
• Much more modular
• Multi-environment support
• Cloud-native adaptability

7.2 Low-Code Platform

• Visual pipeline design reduces development time

• Supports complex transformations without coding

7.3 Extremely Extensible

• Perfect for custom enterprise connectors

• Plugin-driven design
7.4 Flexibility in Deployment

Run pipelines:

• On-prem
• Cloud
• Edge
• Containers
• Distributed compute

7.5 High Developer Productivity

• Reusable components
• Strong debugging tools
• Metadata-driven
• Version-controlled assets

8. Limitations of Apache Hop

Not a full data processing engine (relies on execution engines)

Requires familiarity with visual ETL tools

Not ideal for extremely complex transformations requiring heavy coding

Limited built-in ML libraries (depends on external engines)

9. Simple Example – Pipeline XML Snippet

(A very high-level conceptual example)

<pipeline>
<step name="Read CSV" type="CsvInput">
<file>input/customers.csv</file>
</step>
<step name="Filter" type="FilterRows">
<condition>country = 'US'</condition>
</step>
<step name="Write to DB" type="TableOutput">
<connection>postgres</connection>
<table>customers_us</table>
 </step>
</pipeline>

10. Summary – Why Use Apache Hop?

Use Apache Hop when you need:

A visual, metadata-driven, low-code ETL/ELT tool

Portable pipelines across local → cloud → distributed engines

Integration with Hadoop, Spark, Beam, Kafka

Easy orchestration of complex workflows

Reusable components & multi-environment support

Extensible, open-source, no vendor lock-in

Hop is ideal for modern data engineering teams building scalable, governed, and cloud-ready
data pipelines.