Open Source BI Tools

Introduction

            Most of the nations around the globe are striving to meet the increasing demands of the economy based on knowledge. Such an economy is characterized by flexibility, globalization, innovative enterprises, learning, horizontal and vertical integration, and customer-led strategy. Most of the developed world economies have been using Business Intelligence (BI) for the last decade. Therefore, BI is not longer a new strategy trend anymore. However, its increasing implementation has become a must in the last decade because it one of the tools used by the modern management. Most organizations have made BI the primary goal of profitability and productivity because it has the capabilities to track trends, factors, and challenges as soon as they appear thereby outlining the Key Performer Indicators (KPI).

            An organization should have a comprehensive understanding of essential factors that should be taken into account for a successful introduction of a BI solution. The selected BI solution should be (Bologa & Bologa, 2011):

·         Business-oriented instead of being technology oriented

·         It should act towards the realization of the organizations and objectives

There should be an honest partnering between an organization management and the informatics while evaluation of the organization takes it as a whole. Adoption and implementation of BI solution in an organization have been necessitated by the following issues (Bologa & Bologa, 2011):

·         High costs of investments

·         Need to buy a BI solution that meets specific needs of an organization

·         Understanding the objective of implementation

·         Focus on incomes and results

Pentaho BI-Analytics for Everyone

            Analytics involves obtaining ideas and insights from data to help in making better decisions. Pentaho is one of the BI solutions competitors. Additionally, it is also an ongoing effort by the Open Source (OS) developers to avail the organizations with a solution that meet their BI needs and challenges. Pentaho also includes some components such as reporting, analysis, dashboards, and data mining all in one major application. Pentaho Business Analytics (BA) gives the business users the capabilities to have an intuitive access, exploration, and analysis of the data. Therefore, the business people can make informed decisions that reflect a positive impact on the performance of their businesses (Bologa & Bologa, 2011).

            Analyzing business components by use of Pentaho Business Analytics enables the organization to virtualize the data trends. Such an organization creates static reports from source data analysis, data analysis cube traversing, data points comparison using the charts, and finally through close monitoring of the status of some business trends and thresholds with dashboards. The analysis starts with using various client tools, joining data from various data sources into a single source and maximizing the data for the framework required to undergo analysis. A database schema is created for the data description. The database schema could be improved to enable it to meet the needs of the users while also aggregation tables are created to record frequently computed views (Ortega, Perez, & Royas, 2003).

            Pentaho Analysis is based on the Mondrian relational online analytical processing (ROLAP) engine. Relational OLAP helps in supporting the products of relational database management systems (RDBMS) by using the metadata layer. Therefore, it avoids the need for creating a static multidimensional data structure. ROLAP is known to depend on a multidimensional data model. The multidimensional data model returns a dataset that is similar to a grid when it is queried. All the rows and the columns which offer descriptions and meanings to the data in the grid are dimensions. On the other hand, the hard numerical values in each of the cell are the facts that could also be facts. ROLAP requires a data source which is prepared well, and it should come in the shape of a star or snowflake schema. The schema should be defining a logical and multi-dimensional database while mapping it to a physical database model. The database administrator can design a descriptive data layer once the data structure has been put in place. The descriptive data layer consists of a several cubes, hierarchies, and members. Mondrian schemas are similar to XML models whose structures are similar to cubes. The cube-like structures use fact, and dimension tables contained inside a relational database. A Mondrian schema is developed by using Schema Workbench. It can also be generated using the Data Source Wizard (Thomsen & Pedersen, 2005).

            This paper will consider BA Server Enterprise Edition while developing an analysis that is made for the main indicators in activities such as the Research and Development by sectors of performance and the category of ownership. A BA Server Enterprise Edition has two graphical user interfaces. The two interfaces are the User Console and the Enterprise. The Pentaho User Console is a composition of the following (Thomsen & Pedersen, 2005):

·         Interactive Reporting to help in having quick and easy reports driven by data

·         Pentaho Analyzer for reports and charts based on ROLAP

·         Pentaho Dashboard Designer for comprehensive overviews of key performance indicators

The Pentaho Enterprise Console helps the system administrators, IT managers, CIs, and database administrator to have control over several features of BA Server management, security, and configuration (Thomsen & Pedersen, 2005).

Pentaho Interactive Reporting

            Pentaho Interactive Reporting gives a Web-based, drag and drop interface which allow one to add elements and features to the report layout easily and within a short time. It has features such as font selection, resizing and sorting of the column, freedom and ability of renaming the column headers, the copy and paste functionality. Additionally, it has an unlimited capability to undo and redo capability to generate reports such as PDF, HTML, CSV, and Excel files and display those reports in the dashboard. The Interactive Report bases its data source on a metadata model. Therefore, it generates queries on the selection of metadata (Mircea & Andreescu, 2011).

Pentaho Analyzer

            Pentaho Analyzer is an analysis tool which is interactive. Additionally, the tool gives the users a Web-based and a drag-and-drop user interface. The user interface the process of developing reports based on data exploration easy and quick. The reports created by the Pentaho Analyzer can be displayed on dashboard. Furthermore, the reports allow dynamic data exploration and data drilling to help unearth all the hidden details about the data. It also presents data in a multi-dimensional format and help in the selection of measures and dimensions. Therefore, the reports are use in drilling, slicing, dicing, pivoting, filtering, and creation of calculated fields (Mircea & Andreescu, 2011).

Dashboard Designer

            Creation of a dashboard in a Dashboard Designer requires a layout template and theme. Additionally, the designer should select the content of the dashboard. Besides displaying the content created from action sequences, analyzer, and Interactive Reporting, the Dashboard Designer can also put the following among others: Charts that include simple bar chart, line chart, area chart, pie chart, and dial chart among other charts. There may be the inclusion of Data Tables such as tabular data table. Finally, the Dashboard Designer could also include the URLs that involve websites. A Dashboard Designer has various and dynamic filter controls. The filter controls give the end-users capability to change the details of the dashboards through a selection of another set of values from the drop-down menu. The end-users also have the capability of controlling the dashboard content in one panel by changing the options available in another panel. BI Dashboards help in the provision of the view of different elements of the various businesses’ monitoring environment using various combinations and controls (Miranda, 2004).

Usability

            Usability gives the end-users the ability to access BI functionalities easily. Additionally, usability ensures the developers and administrators have high productivity. According to the user, the BI platforms usability is determined by the BI engines that underlie their internal structures. However, the usability of such engines is considered of low quality. Although the engines do not reach the level of refinement of the commercial categories, their graphical features provide the developed applications an attractive look and feel. However, according to the administrator, the usability of the BI platforms is determined by how easy the platform can be administered whether it can accommodate new functionalities such as (Weir, 2001):

·         The complicated nature of the installation and configuration process: The process of installation is easy for Pentaho. The installation procedures depend on the wizard that also has the installation of other BI engines (Weir, 2001).

·         The complexity of administration: Different usability becomes received well where there is registration of a new report or analysis. Pentaho is more complex in administration than other BI platforms. The Pentaho functionalities registration is based on sequences of the action (Weir, 2001).

·         Ability to solve problems and training effort: Manuals are useful because they help in solving most of the problems. Analysis and studies show that Pentaho is the richest and the most active (Weir, 2001).

Conclusion

            The market is populated with various types of BI solutions. Therefore, each organization must make a make a comprehensive decision the BI solution that contributes more effectively to achieving goals and objectives of the organization. However, the choice of the solution should be based on the costs and benefits the organization draws from the solution. This paper has discussed Pentaho Business Analytics as one of the several BI solutions. It allows rapid development of IT and it is secure and scalable. Therefore, it is one of the most suitable BI solutions for most organizations.  

References

Bologa, A. R., & Bologa, R. (2011). Business intelligence using software agents. Database           Systems Journal, 2 (4), 50-62.

Miranda, S. (2004). Business intelligence beyond BI: Corporate performance management            solutions. Financial Executive, 20 (2), 58-62.

Mircea, M., & Andreescu, A. I. (2011). Agile development for service oriented business    intelligence solutions. Database Systems Journal, 2 (1). 44-56

Ortega, M., Perez, M., & Royas, T. (2003). Construction of a systemic quality model for   evaluating a software product. Software Quality Journal, 1 (1), 219-242.

Thomsen, C., & Pedersen, T. B. (2005). A survey of Open Source tools for Business            Intelligence.

Weir, J. (2001). A web/business intelligence solution. Information Systems Management, 17 (1),    41-46.

Sherry Roberts is the author of this paper. A senior editor at MeldaResearch.Com in Online Writing Services if you need a similar paper you can place your order from free essay writing services.