Since the very first time I downloaded the Pentaho suite I’ve been wailing, screaming, shouting, snarking that there absolutely MUST be a way to manage data sources that does not involve XML.
Well… Holy Shit. At just under 3 years it’s here (Pentaho Administration Console from 2.0.M3 build):
This is a most appreciated feature for those getting started with Pentaho! Thank you to the Pentaho Engineers for whipping it up!
PS – It’s not perfect yet, but should be solid by 2.0 GA
Nick – we purposely held this back because we love to hear you wail in pain but we finally gave in….glad you like it and plenty more to come.
Is it a free feature?
yes. The screenshot from above is from the community edition bi server milestone build.
Indeed, we all suffered in pain, editing DS until our fingers bled.
However, better later than never 
We are very happy indeed! However yet, the docs still have some way to go until they are promptly avaliable – it wouldn’t hurt (pain again) to save a readme pointing to the right wiki page or even a PDF dump from it.