Int. J. Information and Decision Sciences, Vol. 10, No. 1, 2018 3 Copyright © 2018 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd. RAID-B2K, transforming BPMN conceptual schemas into Kettle execution primitives Orlando Belo*, Vasco Santos, Bruno Oliveira and Cláudia Gomes ALGORITMI R&D Centre, Department of Informatics, School of Engineering, University of Minho, Campus de Gualtar, 4710-057 Braga, Portugal Email: obelo@di.uminho.pt Email: vsantos@estgf.ipp.pt Email: id4103@alunos.uminho.pt Email: pg22818@alunos.uminho.pt *Corresponding author Ricardo Marques WeDo Technologies, Centro Empresarial de Braga, Ferreiros, 4705-319 Braga, Portugal Email: ricardo.marques@wedotechnologies.com Abstract: There are many tools for designing and modelling extract-transform- load (ETL) systems, covering its entire development life cycle. However, the vast majority of them use proprietary methodologies, notations and tasks, which undermine their understanding and application. In this paper, we present a translation tool for conceptual models, with the ability to reduce the ‘gap’ that usually exists when we need to translate a conceptual model for an equivalent physical one. We will demonstrate that it is possible to automatically translate ETL conceptual models developed in business process model and notation (BPMN) into the environment of a specific ETL implementation tool (Kettle–Pentaho data integration). The BPMN models were built to produce schemes for a specific execution environment (RAID) allowing us to demonstrate the utility of the tool in the translation, validation and generation of the physical schemas which we designated as ETL skeletons – a set of execution primitives properly orchestrated. Keywords: decision support systems; ETL systems modelling and implementation; ETL conceptual models; business process model and notation; BPMN; ETL physical models; Pentaho data integration; Kettle. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Belo, O., Santos, V., Oliveira, B., Gomes, C. and Marques, R. (2018) ‘RAID-B2K, transforming BPMN conceptual schemas into kettle execution primitives’, Int. J. Information and Decision Sciences, Vol. 10, No. 1, pp.3–18.