Recommended usage

The Petals-SE-Talend component is intended to execute jobs created with Talend Open Studio and Talend Integration Suite.
Whenever you want to work with both Talend and Petals ESB, it is the component to use.

There are three ways of seeing the jobs that will be executed in Petals ESB.

First, they can be seen as an extension of the platform capabilities.
Indeed, a job can easily interact with almost any database, any kind of file, or other systems (SAP, Alfresco, etc...). Rather than developing a specific component, it can be interesting to create a job to cover this task, and expose it as a service through Petals. The job here acts as a mediation way with data stores or systems.

Second, a job can be seen as a set of transformation means.
Indeed, Talend products provide Talend components that are very efficient and convenient for transformations (e.g. the tMap component). However, it must be clear that these transformations only cover flat structures, like schemas of relational databases. Object or XML schemas are not covered. From this point of view, the Petals-SE-Talend component cannot replace the Petals-SE-XSLT component. But it can be an alternative in few cases. Hence, transformations will either rely on attachment files (the content of the attached files is transformed by the job) or on Talend components for Petals (known as tPetalsInput and tPetalsOutput). The later solution provides a means to place the content to transform inside the XML message, rather than as an attachment. But still with constraints on the XML shape.

Eventually, the last way to apprehend a Talend job inside Petals, is to see it as a an application to execute inside Petals.
This application may work with data stores (files, databases...), may involve data transformations, but may also use other (if not redundant with Petals) features. As an example, it is possible to send mails inside a job, connect to FTPs, etc... Obviously, these features are also available inside Petals. But in some cases, it can be more interesting and more simple to integrate them directly in the job than use the Petals'ones (where you will have to use EIPs or BPELs to link the calls). In some other cases though, the exact opposite may be the best option, i.e. externalize some parts to Petals components. It all depends on the expected granularity and reusability.

The wide variety of possibilities (allowed by the non-less important variety of Talend components, and by the features of the Petals-SE-Talend component) makes this solution a very flexible one. However, as a Swiss-knife component, the Petals-SE-Talend component should mainly be seen as a functional service-engine. Performances, without being bad, cannot be the best ones offered. People looking for a very specific and high-performance usage will prefer develop their own Petals component, or use Petals-SE-Pojo or Petals-SE-Jsr181 components.