Nicholas Goodman on Business Intelligence

So, it appears as if there was some pent up demand for great looking flash charts. The brief couple of days that my initial post on my rough integration work with Open Flash Charts I’ve had:
- 2 Pentaho Partners ask for the solution so they can start using it
- 3 Community members ask about it (including one who started but never finished a similar task)
- An existing customer decide to implement it

Cool! As an open source guy, I believe in early and often, so I’m posting my .xactions for this stuff here.

Installation Steps

1. Have a working Sample BI Server
2. Drop open-flash-chart-.swf into pentaho-demo/jboss/server/default/deploy/pentaho-style.war pentaho-demo/jboss/server/default/deploy/pentaho-style.war/images (nice catch in comments below)
3. Drop flash_chart_example_bar.xaction and flash_chart_example.xaction into pentaho-solutions/samples/charts

That should you get two the sample bar chart and the sample pie chart working.

These action sequences are kind of fancy. They do a fair bit of string replacements, result set walking, etc. So, they aren’t for the casual user but if you’ve done some Pentaho stuff before you’ll be able to work your way through it.

The interesting part is really the “datacall=true” branch. The first time the action sequence is called it returns a fragment of code that contains the flash object.

<object classid=”clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000″ codebase=”http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=8,0,0,0″ width=”600″ height=”500″ id=”graph-2″ align=”middle”><param name=”allowScriptAccess” value=”sameDomain” /> <param name=”movie” value=”/pentaho-style/images/open-flash-chart.swf?width=600&height=500&data=http%3A//localhost%3A8080/pentaho/ViewAction%3Fsolution%3Dsamples%26path%3Dcharts%26action%3Dflash_chart_example_bar.xaction%26datacall%3Dtrue” /> <param name=”quality” value=”high” /><param name=”bgcolor” value=”#FFFFFF” /> <embed src=”/pentaho-style/images/open-flash-chart.swf?width=600&height=500&data=http%3A//localhost%3A8080/pentaho/ViewAction%3Fsolution%3Dsamples%26path%3Dcharts%26action%3Dflash_chart_example_bar.xaction%26datacall%3Dtrue” quality=”high” bgcolor=”#FFFFFF” width=”600″ height=”500″ name=”open-flash-chart” align=”middle” allowScriptAccess=”sameDomain” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” pluginspage=”http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer” /> </object>

In this fragment, the flash object is given a “datafile” location which is the same action sequence but with a datacall=true.

The datacall=”true” basically returns a text file that looks like this:

&y_min=0& &y_max=40000000& &y_steps=4& &title=Actual vs Budget by Region,{font-size:20px; color: #bcd6ff; margin:10px; background-color: #5E83BF; padding: 5px 15px 5px 15px;}& &y_legend=USD,12,#736AFF& &x_labels=Central,Eastern,Southern,Western& &x_axis_colour=#909090& &x_grid_colour=#D2D2FB& &y_axis_colour=#909090& &y_grid_colour=#D2D2FB& &bar_glass=55,#D54C78,#C31812,Actuals,12& &values=37893162,35248940,35248940,35248940& &bar_glass_2=55,#5E83BF,#424581,Budget,12& &values_2=38397600,35487861,34803861,34510067&

This text file is really what gives the flash chart it’s form, labels, and data.

Again, this is quick and dirty implementation but it’s a life saver if you need something more than the charting in the platform.

I’ve worked on several customer dashboards and found the charting in Pentaho to be pretty good in a lot of circumstances, but lacking for a lot of circumstances. In particular, certain shading, animations, etc aren’t supported in Pentaho charts (based on JFreeChart).

There are a bunch of Flash charting libraries, and I recently worked with a customer that was using “Open Flash Charts.” I helped them get Mondrian data streaming through to this flash charting engine. I was surprised to find that the library is open source, and is moving to LGPL (away from GPL) to ensure that people feel comfortable embedding it in their applications.

I started integrating these charting capabilities with Pentaho to see how the charts look. I was seeing some really great results. The integration was done via a fair amount of fancy Javascript/Xaction sequence stuff but this integration did not require any custom Java application work. Just Pentaho .xactions and the basic open-flash-chart.swf. I might start looking at building a small little JSP library to help with some of this.

The first one I built was a little pie chart, that has a nice animation (copied and pasted here without the dynamic .xaction stuff)

The second one I built was this beautiful bar chart, comparing actuals and budgets.

In all cases, if you’re needing some “more” from Pentaho in terms of data visualization, don’t hesitate to be in touch. This flash chart is the latest in a series of dashboards that Bayon has been building for customers.

UPDATE: I built another one for a new customer, and changed the data labels for presentation here. Having a grand time with open flash chart. This chart below is the output of an MDX query to Mondrian. The one is the metric ( a base measure ) the other is a running total.

Pentaho announced last week that their BI Platform version 2.x and onward would be released under the GPLv2 license. I’m an outspoken critic of GPL for a lot of use cases, and personally lean toward an Apache/MIT/BSD myself. However, for nearly everyone involved in Pentaho this is a non event, not that big of a deal, and good for Pentaho.

By now, if you’ve ever read anything I’ve written before about GPL for “business-eee” type projects you’re probably wondering “Has Nicholas completely sold out?” Well, I’ll leave that conclusion for another venue/time, wink wink, but there’s some very clear reasons why GPL is not a bad thing for most people involved in Pentaho.

First and foremost, is to understand what is moving to GPL. That makes a huge difference in understanding the impact. It is only the BI Platform technologies that are going GPL and the core libraries (Reporting, Kettle, Mondrian, …) are remaining under their original (ie, somewhat permissive) licensing. The things that are being GPL’ed are the things that end users are using. For instance, the ability to navigate through a set of reports. Run reports with parameters, etc. This is the code that makes the Pentaho core technologies (OLAP/ETL/Reporting) look and feel like a full product with login screens, UIs, run scheduling, etc.

The other piece to mention is that GPL only really affects ISV/OEMs.

For end users (even SaaS providers) it makes no difference GPLv2 vs MPL. So, if you’re considering downloading Pentaho to start a project at your company for your own intranet, extranet, BI, dashboards, etc this will have NO affect on you.

One of my beefs with the GPL has always been that it stunts adoption and the ability for multiple parties to work on the project, embed and utilize it in a commercial venture. The core libraries remain in tact in this regard - Mondrian can be embedded just as easily as it was originally because it’s license remains unaffected. Kettle can as well (LGPL). Pentaho Reporting - good to go too. The Platform as a set of UI (and productized versions of the core libraries) will be, in my opinion, cast aside for anyone wanting to embed these technologies into their own product.

The license will now be a big contributor to this decision, but to be truthful, if you want to “just use” Mondrian then you’re BETTER OFF by “just using” Mondrian. If you want Mondrian in conjunction with Reporting now you’ll want to consider the Platform but my experience shows that if you’re using these technologies in your application using the core applications/interfaces is preferable. The platform makes the projects work for end customers, but the platform is kind of “a lot” for someone who just wants to execute some ETL jobs or use JPivot/Mondrian in their application. That’s not to say that ISV/OEMs shouldn’t reach out to Pentaho to still get OEM support on embedding “just Mondrian” into their application. Pentaho’s subscription and services are quite valuable in this regard - I can think of no better group of people to help make a project successful then the people who wrote it.

It’s not clear to me whether or not Pentaho Metadata will be GPL. When I was working at Pentaho I advocated strongly against GPL for it, because I believed that done correctly the project could become *the* metadata editor/infrastructure for just about any new Open Source or proprietary project. For a variety of reasons, this hasn’t happened. GPL, in my opinion, ensures that Pentaho’s Metadata project will remain solely and simply that: Pentahos Metadata project. I don’t think they’ll be any other salient, significant contributor if it goes GPL. However, it’s not a big loss to Pentaho since there has been hardly any (have there been any?) contributions to that project to date anyhow.

GPL, should it provide Pentaho more “protection” on the Platform code so that it can not be ISV/OEM’ed without payments, could end up benefitting most everyone. Why? Because should Pentaho feel like it’s able to monetize the open source edition consistently, there is less need to keep more in the professional edition. If GPL provides additional cover, I’d hope to see more code flying into the Open Source (GPL) edition of the product. However, I’ve not heard anything about this from Pentaho and only time will tell.
There you have it.

GPL makes pretty much no difference to end users, customers, SaaS providers, etc. It pretty much makes no difference to ISV/OEMs because they’ll want to embed the core libraries, not necessarily the entire platform. Pentaho remains a strong choice in every regard; customers are signing up in droves, the value is immense.

It is, for all intensive purposes, a non event.

I needed to uniquely identify a request to Pentaho (one particular action sequence request). Found a pretty darn easy way to do this with the help from Java RMI classes.

- Insert a Javascript data source

- Enter the following script

function getGUID() {
var VMID = new Packages.java.rmi.dgc.VMID();
return VMID.toString();
}
getGUID();

- Set return type as “string” for a new value

- Add it to your response

- Enjoy your GUIDs!
cef9372c035a42ed:-b0917ee:119a6d47d72:-7ff4
cef9372c035a42ed:-b0917ee:119a6d47d72:-7ff3
cef9372c035a42ed:-b0917ee:119a6d47d72:-7ff2

PS - I personally hate GUIDs when stored in the database. However, for matching up with a particular request, yippeee!!

There’s been some questions floating through the Pentahoshpere (I think I’m the first person to use that word, btw) about how to use Subreports. I think there’s a good description at the wiki that covers the basics, but I don’t think there’s a good working example that is shipping with Pentaho open source yet.

I don’t really have time to delve into all of it so in the spirit of “early and often” I’ll just post the zip file with a working example (on 1.6 GA Designer and Server).

Here tis:
http://nicholasgoodman.com/entry_images/pentaho_subreport_example.zip

2007 was an off year for me when it comes to blogging. Not a surprise, since my first blog after returning from my trip to Argentina was entitled “Am I done blogging?”

Seeing that I’m a self proclaimed “Data Dynamo and BI Geek” and even google agrees (search term “BI Geek” yields me at the top) it seems only fitting for me to see how bad 2007 was… You know, by the numbers.

First, pop the top on the wordpress database schema. (5 minutes)
Second, write a simple SQL Query based cube (blogmart.mondrian.xml) on top of my blog data (posts, categories) (15 minutes)
Third, do some analysis in JPivot to see how 2007 really shaped up against previous years ( instant )

2007 was my worst blogging year, ever. Including 2004 which I started blogging mid year! Ouch!

Another interesting data point. I’ve blogged a bunch about Oracle, and Open Source. When I was first blogging I was working with Oracle as a focus of my consultancy. End of 2005 I began investigating Open Source BI in earnest, and even jumped onto the Pentaho ship for the better part of 2006 and 2007. How did this change in professional life affect my blog content? A bunch!

In 2004 and 2005 my blog content was give or take, 75% Oracle and 25% open source. 2006 that proportion flipped and the desert of 2007 I’ve done ZERO Oracle blogs.

What about comments? What topics yield the most number of comments and discussion?

Open Source, Pentaho, Personal, General Topics. Oracle was one of the least “commented” sections, even though I know from google keyword analytics its one of the things that drives traffic to my blog.

Well, there you have it. A year in the review of my (lacking) blog. Perhaps my new years resolution should be to blog more?

One of my pet peeves is an email thread that grows 100 lines with every “Sounds good to me” reply. You know what I’m talking about.

10 screens of text, with about 1 screen of actual content/conversation.

All these logos and titles, fax numbers, clever logans and sayings, etc. AHHHH….

It’s a networked world, it doesn’t have to be on EVERY SINGLE EMAIL RESPONSE. If you want to get in touch with me, you can google me and immediately find my site, etc.

I’m Twitter’ed, LinkedIn, YahooMessenger, AIM, MSN, skype, etc. I’m easy to get a hold of, you don’t need to have 10 copies of ALL MY CONTACT INFO in an email.

One of my professional mentors, and my “boss” through my time at Matchlogic, Inc. recently took a leap from Software Development to Solar Energy.  Steve is an exceptional architect, developer, and all around skilled software engineer.  He’s built systems that are exceptional functional and well designed. 

While the Java world will mourn the loss of an exceptional technologist, the Solar Energy industry will benefit greatly from his talent.  I know that Steve will be successful in his new business; he’s smart, capable, and more than anything else he’s passionate about Solar Energy.

Check out his blog if you’re interested in Solar Energy.

I really didn’t like my last Wordpress theme.  Was amazingly functional, but was NOT interesting at all.

Most blog themes, are fixed width which I think is about the dumbest thing in the entire world.  In the day and age where PCs and Macs come standard with resolutions in excess of 1280×1024 not being able to take advantage of the entire screen is just plain wacko.  Especially for my blogs.  I write blogs that have some pretty involved screen shots that if you try and place into a “fixed width” template you have like 300 pixels “width” for a screen shot.  Super lame.

Anyhow, attribution has been top of mind lately.  It IS important to attribute creative works and I believe people should give credit where credit is due, not necessarily be FORCED to credit:  that’s why it’s called “giving credit.”

Thanks “Tiga” and “Ozh” for a great template.  I’m thrilled.  Thank you for your contribution and your work is appreciated here!

What do you think?  Anyone care to say whether they like this theme?  Dislike it?

Our good friends at BreadboardBI have just released a solution to provide a common web analytics and reports.  While that, in and of itself, isn’t that earth shattering because there’s several FOSS projects that do this, what IS compelling is that it’s a Pentaho solution.  This picks up where the others leave off; the ability to build your own custom reports, extend the solution with another dimension or fact.  Add some of your own views, deliver the reports via email, etc. 

Check out the project and some of the features at BreadboardBI and sourceforge.  Here are some screenshots from their application; there’s some cool stuff in there!

Including a bunch of “OLAP views” so that users can filter, slice and dice, and search for information on their own.

I think we’re going to see more of these “solutions” pop up over time.  We just released the Software Quality for Bugzilla two weeks back, BreadBoardBI just released their Web Analytics project, OpenBI have a set of templates “OpenQuick Suite” they use for consulting gigs, Proratio with their SAP Connector, etc.  I’ll venture to say that our growing partner base is maturing in the sophistication of their services; with services partners exceeding “pure play” consulting and including some solutions and rapid starts that help deliver even MORE value on top of Pentaho.