I'm currently in an internship and i have to create a whole BI application.
I think i'll use pentaho, and I have to use just open source component.
I know that Pentaho Analyzer is not free
My question is: Is saiku an equivalent of analyzer?
If yes, can I use it with pentaho instead of analyzer?
thks
I'm the developer of Pivot4J project and want to share my (subjective) opinion on the subject.
First, as though you righteously assumed Pivot4J to be more of an API than an application, it does not always mean you need to write lot of code to use it.
We also have a Pentaho BI plugin which does not require any coding and has comparable features to Saiku plugin, though it's targeted toward the yet unreleased Pentaho 5.0 platform.
And our sample application provides most of the functionalities that JPivot web application has, even though it lacks a data source configuration feature which will be soon to be fixed.
Compared to Saiku, I think each project has its own advantage in different scenarios.
Saiku has a much lightweight architecture on the client side than our sample application and the plugin, so it can be deployed and embedded virtually anywhere.
While it's not much difficult to create a full REST style analytic application with Pivot4J, our current sample and plugin applications require at least a Servlet container to run and are more difficult to be embeded than Saiku in certain environment.
On the other hand, as Pivot4J is designed to be UI independent API from the start, it could provide more flexibility than Saiku in my opinion to developers when they want to build their own application on top of it, or intend to customize core behaviors of the API.
For example, if you want to use Pivot4J with your own application which is build with ExtJS, DhtmlX, or any other UI toolkits, it'd be much easier to achieve a seamless integration with Pivot4J, as it provides you with convenient abstract extension points to do that.
Finally, if you're familiar with Javascript you might find working with Saiku easier as it delegates most of the UI related works to the client side.
On the other hand, if you're an old school Java developer like me :) you might find our sample application to be easier to understand and work with, as there's virtually no custom script involved and everything is done on the server side with JSF component model.
To conclude, I'd like to say that Pivot4J is not just an API which cannot be used without writing much codes as it already includes quite feature complete Pentaho BI plugin for the upcoming 5.0 release of the platform. And as Pivot4J and Saiku take rather different approach from each other, each has its own strength and advantage which could be leveraged to suit the specific use case.
Yes of course. Both the tools use the same underlying OLAP engine - Mondrian. Saiku is essentially the same as analyzer providing many of the same features - however it has a different architecture which additionally makes it very embeddable and pluggable. Plus Saiku can be used standalone too if you want to.
Check out the demo at dev.analytical-labs.com to see what it can do.
Also for help you wont find many tools with such a great community - hook up with them on Freenode IRC at either ##Pentaho or ##Saiku depending on your questions!
Pentaho is the right choice for OS BI too - Presume you looked at Jaspersoft as well? Worth a look but you'll no doubt realise the features are better in Pentaho.
Have you think about a pure javascript UI to pivot your olap cubes? There is one such component calls WebPivotTable at http://webpivottable.com
Jpivot, saiku and pentaho are all based on olap4j API so that they all need a java server side service. WebPivotTable use AJAX call to xmla service directly so that it can be used to pivot any xmla OLAP server, like mondrian, SSAS, iccube. Since it doesn't tie up with any java back end and also it is pure javascript based, you can easily integrate it into any website or web application.
Related
I have been researching OLAP servers such as Tableau, Jasper, BIRT iHub, etc.
but it appears that none of them provide reasonable support to customise the
user interface. All of them use the browser as the rendering system but
changing their default screens or "viewer" windows is not encouraged
(possible?).
I DO NOT want to write a full fledged J2EE application and drop JAR files
in the WAR. I have done it in the past and was expecting improved support
for this type of requirements.
Any pointers?
Thanks for the additional info.
May be the Swiss tool, icCube, can help you. icCube ships with an in-memory OLAP engine and built in web reporting application. You can embed the software seamless in other web applications, so adjusting the look-and-feel and customer branding is relatively simple.
As the reseller of icCube in The Netherlands, I have implemented icCube at several clients that were looking for an affordable dashboard solution that could completely blend into their product. Based on our customers' enthusiasm I think I can say we succeeded in that.
You can view some live demo's on our website. Also tons of info is available at icCube´s site. If you want more, I can show you some embedded examples through skype if you want to.
Hope this has helped.
I've been tasked to develop a small web application for my company, and my initial plan was to use the Zend framework with Doctrine as this allowed for all the necessary features I needed. However, recently I came across a Joomla application builder called Fabrik which seems to have a lot of potential. My question is if anyone here has used it and if so, what your experiences were? Is it a stable, secure platform? Is it easy to use and does it allow for simple to more complex applications? And finally, how does it compare to one of the more established frameworks such as Zend or Cake etc. Any info regarding to your experiences would be appreciated.
I have not gone beyond a proof-of-concept using Fabrik, so I'm far from being an expert. What I've found so far is that Fabrik installs and configures easily in the Joomla environment and it's easy to get up and running. It's quite easy to get tables of output from the database and it's possible to do JOINs to combine data from multiple tables. The output format can be customized using CSS but I haven't been able to really customize the structure and I'm not sure it's possible to combine multiple tables into one report for example.
It's very easy to create a form that is an exact match of a table, so for data entry, it's very easy to set up a form to edit table data.
I haven't found it to be very flexible for creating a custom search form or a form that takes input from two drop-down list boxes and does a query based on the selected items in both lists.
The advanced search function that is provided is fairly powerful, but doesn't fit seamlessly into the Joomla environment so I think this feature needs to work to be something I would roll out to users.
Bottom line: Fabrik has been really well architected and will eventually be the most powerful and useful data management tool for Joomla, I just don't think it's quite there yet for providing a wide variety of forms and reports for end-users. It is still a very handy tool for more basic reports and for more tech savvy users to maintain data in a database.
Seen this question a bit too late, hope you have managed to solve your issues, but however, my several years experience with Fabrik and a few attempts on PHP frameworks such as Zend, Codeignitor etc, I can tell you Fabrik is the best RAD tool around. Especially now that version 3.x.x which works with latest Joomla 2.5.X is out. Offers so much power that you can have a very powerful system done within one night.
I plan to make an web application using XPages for the design (plus the Lotus Notes Elements), but instead of storing the data in Lotus Notes, I will store the data in a RDBMS (specifically an Oracle Database). As you can see, I want to create a clear separation between the design and data. Is there a way I can do this? I mean, is there a way I can use Oracle as the data source and XPages/Lotus Notes for the UI only? Thanks a lot!
There actually has been native support for RDBMS/JDBC connectivity in Xpages since July 2011. Take a look at the Extension Library on OpenNTF (http://extlib.openntf.org/) and read the blogpost announcing the functionality: http://www.openntf.org/blogs/openntf.nsf/d6plinks/NHEF-8JYMXE.
It's not yet officially supported through IBM (not part of the Upgrade Pack 1 - http://www-01.ibm.com/software/lotus/notesanddomino/nd85-UpgradePack853-1.html), but there will be support for it in the future.
The short answer appears to be "yes but no" .
XPages is JDBC compliant, so you can connect to anything, including Oracle. The snag is, you'll probably have to write the code yourself. Apparently there are plans to open source a JDBC-based Relational Database XPages DataSource but there's been no activity as such. Find out more
XPages101.net may be a good site for cutting your teeth on Xpages. They have 60 lessons you can subscribe to. They are highly recommended. You may be particularly interested in lesson 55.
DISCLAIMER: I am not affiliated with XPages101.net in any way.
The XPages environment doesn't have any particular support for relational data sources, but there are two viable options depending on how cautious your organization is about using recent and beta software and how much support code you're willing to write.
For the former case, the XPages Extension Library (http://extlib.openntf.org/) is adding in relational database support for the 8.5.3 release of Domino, which is scheduled to come out at the beginning of next month. I'm not in the 8.5.3 beta, so I haven't seen this in action, but the video on their page looks promising and the Extension Library is high-quality in general. So if you're willing to deploy 8.5.3 when it comes out and use the Extension Library, it'll likely do just what you want.
If you won't be immediately upgrading or don't want to deploy the Library, you can write your own code using JDBC drivers; there's an example of this technique here: http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/ddwiki.nsf/dx/xpage_integration_rdb.htm . While you can't, for example, just pass a RecordSet to a Repeat control on an XPage, if you're willing to write your own ORM, you could make your objects implement the List interface use Java-Bean-style naming, which would let you use them in standard controls and write expression language like "#{someRecord.someField}".
I'm a junior VB.net developer with little application design knowledge. I've been reading a lot of material online regarding different design patterns, frameworks, and methodologies. It's become a bit confusing for me.
Right now I'm trying to decide on what language would be best suited to convert an existing VB6 application (with SQL server backend.) I need to update the UI and add more user functionality and reporting capabilities. Initially I was thinking of using WPF and attempting the MVVM model for this big project. Reports would be generated from SSRS.
A peer suggested using ASP.net and I don't have enough experience to determine what would be better. The senior programmers here are stuck on using VB6 and don't have any input on what to use. They are encouraging me to use the latest technologies.
This application would be for ~20 users in a central location. Ideally I would stick to a Microsoft .net language. Current interface is similar to a datagrid table where the user would click in to see the detail of each record. They would need to have multiple records open at any given time.
I look forward to all the advice I can get.
EDIT 2010/04/22 2:47 PM EST
What is your audience? Internal clients within an intranet
How complex are the interactions you expect to implement? not very... displaying data from SQL server to UI. Allow user updates to said data. Typically just one user modifying a record.
Do you require near real-time data updates? no
How often do you expect to update the application after the first release? twice/year
Do you expect a well-defined set of client platforms? Yes, windows xp environment, potentially upgrading to Win7. Currently in IE.6 moving to IE7 or 8 within a couple of months.
Do users need access from anywhere? No, just from their PC.
What would be wrong about building a simple ASP.Net application in VB.Net using Gridviews for allowing the data access and manipulation? Seems like a simple ADO.Net trial application if you aren't familiar with it in the beginning you will be by the end. CRUD applications are pretty common so it shouldn't be too hard to build it and then refine it as more requirements become apparent.
Sounds like you need to use a web-based solution--this eliminates alot of your potential distribution woes with multiple users. You could use silverlight, but if you are locked into SSRS, this might not be the way to go.
Has anyone had experience with developing web apps using ClearQuest? Looking at the features, it mentions process automation but I'm not sure how large of a process/application it can support. Our group gave up a small section of a larger application to another group that used ClearQuest to web-enabled the process but now the ClearQuest tools are being pushed on us to web-enable the entire application. I have a ASP.NET background but ClearQuest is very wizard like and the only code that I've seen is called "BASIC" and it looks a lot like VBScript.
Clearcase/Clearquest has decent integration with Rational Applicaiton Developer. I am not sure if you arsking about its strenghts or actually exposing ClearQuest to the web. You can do the obligatory and lame activity of writing CGI/PERL scripts to expose some of the features to the web. You can use perl or VBScript to write CC/CQ hooks. It has its own perl build included in the product called ratperl. It has fantastic command line support but it comes at a price of complexity. CC/CQ is very powerful provided you think about the implementation in your organization very carefully. It can support very powerful work flows and is highly customizable.
There are several APIs which allow you to do what you want, write a WebApp.
CQWeb itself is built using the CM API, which allows a Java application (web or non-web) to be build. A tutorial is here:
http://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSSH5A_9.0.0/com.ibm.rational.team_api_cq_tut.doc/topics/teamapi_cq_abstract.htm
You could implement a basic web application using perl-CGI, since CQ has a Perl API.
You can write an ASP/C# web application because ClearQuest has a OLE (Visual Basic) API. The original ClearQuest Web application was built using the Visual Basic API
So the answer is yes, it is possible.
Wouldn't it be nice it supported a JavaScript API? Then we could write nodeJS CQ applications.
Sure it's possible, for a VS style integration I would either wrap the cqole.dll or use the OSLC connectors to get access to the RESTful interface. While the cqole is the C++ API and it is not officially supported this will suite you better than trying to implement this with the VBScript API. If you are more comfortable with just using the web services I would check out jazz.net where the wiki explains the bridge in gory details.
You dont exactly develop webapp with ClearQuest, CQ is only a process automation tool that build on logic and state transitions, and the interactions are scripted in either VBScript or Perl.
However do note that it has always been a pain to manage CQ codes as the "Designer" itself is a completely broken tool. It supports version tracking but doesnt tell u the difference between versions. The built-in code editor doesnt have syntax highligting, and it doesnt support parallel development. I can go on and on.
In the later versions, (version 7 onwards I supposed), CQ comes with eclipse based client AND designer tools, which supposedly enhance the whole experience. But I dont have too much experience with it to comment.
As for the web component, it runs on the websphere layer and simply is a application/presentation layer for users to access CQ through a HTTP protocol. It has 90% of the features of a full CQ client, and is usually easier to maintain and deploy to a wide user group.
Check out http://open-services.net/ for information on development using Open Services for Lifecycle Collaboration.