What causes "Unable to load job entry of type 'xsdvalidator' from XML node" in pentaho/pentaho-kettle?

Inspect the wrapped cause exception for the exact XML parsing problem

pentaho/pentaho-kettle · error · KettleXMLException

Unable to load job entry of type 'xsdvalidator' from XML…

Error message

Unable to load job entry of type 'xsdvalidator' from XML node

What it means

JobEntryXSDValidator.loadXML rethrows KettleXMLException when the job entry cannot be deserialized from its XML <entry> node. It wraps failures in XMLHandler tag reads or super.loadXML, keeping the original cause.

Solutions

Inspect the wrapped cause exception for the exact XML parsing problem
Re-export or re-save the job from Spoon to regenerate valid XML
Check the <entry> node contains the expected xsdvalidator fields
Verify the file encoding is valid UTF-8

Defensive patterns

Strategy: try-catch

Try / catch

try {
  entry.loadXML( entrynode, databases, slaveServers );
} catch ( KettleXMLException e ) {
  logError( "xsdvalidator entry load failed: " + e.getCause(), e );
  throw e;
}

Prevention

Edit jobs only through Spoon, not by hand-editing .kjb files
Keep PDI versions consistent between authors and runners
Back up job files before editing
Validate .kjb XML well-formedness after external processing

When it happens

Trigger: Loading a .kjb job whose <entry type='xsdvalidator'> node is malformed or unreadable via XMLHandler.getTagValue / super.loadXML.

Common situations: Hand-edited or corrupted .kjb files; job XML written by a newer PDI version containing unexpected structure; encoding issues in the job file.

Understand the failure class

Background: "failed to unmarshal" / json.Unmarshal errors: why parsing a response into a Go struct fails and how to fix it — this error's family across 23 libraries.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of pentaho/pentaho-kettle@f3058517a1 (2026-09-13). Data as JSON: /api/errors/d7a803cecc376aa9. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at plugins/xml/core/src/main/java/org/pentaho/di/job/entries/xsdvalidator/JobEntryXSDValidator.java:120

    retval.append( super.getXML() );
    retval.append( "      " ).append( XMLHandler.addTagValue( "xmlfilename", xmlfilename ) );
    retval.append( "      " ).append( XMLHandler.addTagValue( "xsdfilename", xsdfilename ) );
    retval.append( "      " ).append( XMLHandler.addTagValue( "allowExternalEntities", allowExternalEntities ) );

    return retval.toString();
  }

  public void loadXML( Node entrynode, List<DatabaseMeta> databases, List<SlaveServer> slaveServers, Repository rep,
      IMetaStore metaStore ) throws KettleXMLException {
    try {
      super.loadXML( entrynode, databases, slaveServers );
      xmlfilename = XMLHandler.getTagValue( entrynode, "xmlfilename" );
      xsdfilename = XMLHandler.getTagValue( entrynode, "xsdfilename" );
      allowExternalEntities = YES.equalsIgnoreCase( XMLHandler.getTagValue( entrynode, "allowExternalEntities" ) );

    } catch ( KettleXMLException xe ) {
      throw new KettleXMLException( "Unable to load job entry of type 'xsdvalidator' from XML node", xe );
    }
  }

  public void loadRep( Repository rep, IMetaStore metaStore, ObjectId id_jobentry, List<DatabaseMeta> databases,
      List<SlaveServer> slaveServers ) throws KettleException {
    try {
      xmlfilename = rep.getJobEntryAttributeString( id_jobentry, "xmlfilename" );
      xsdfilename = rep.getJobEntryAttributeString( id_jobentry, "xsdfilename" );
      allowExternalEntities =
        Boolean.parseBoolean( rep.getJobEntryAttributeString( id_jobentry, "allowExternalEntities" ) );
    } catch ( KettleException dbe ) {
      throw new KettleException( "Unable to load job entry of type 'xsdvalidator' from the repository for id_jobentry="
          + id_jobentry, dbe );
    }
  }

  public void saveRep( Repository rep, IMetaStore metaStore, ObjectId id_job ) throws KettleException {
    try {

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