All conventional BI solutions offer a Web-based platform for reporting. A majority of them also have Excel and PDF adaptors to convert the Web-based reporting formats into Excel or PDF documents. These adaptors however transform the final output (the view) of the report into an Excel document. The end result is not necessarily what the end user desires since the transformation does not make use of the native Excel formatting and analysis features. As a result, the user will get his/her report in Excel without the ability to do anything further with it. This is not exactly what the end user wants. To circumvent this problem business users ‘cut-and-paste’ the relevant data from Web-reports or other data sources into their preferred Excel templates (created and managed individually by the user) making use of the native Excel features that assist them in their decision making requirements. The end result is a set of isolated Excel-based data marts, also referred as spreadmarts, propagated throughout the organization. These spreadmarts are uncontrolled, unverified, and prone to error due to manual intervention.

There is a strong need for a robust solution that addresses the business user need for Excel interactivity and IT requirement for control and manageability. One of the very few such tools that offer this functionality is BIRT Spreadsheet from Actuate. A report author uses the BIRT Spreadsheet Designer (that looks and feels like Excel) to build a report design. The report design acts as a blueprint for how the resultant spreadsheet report is to be generated by the server. The design defines:

• Where the data should be coming from – which data sources, datasets, queries, and parameters to use to filter the incoming data
• How the incoming data is to be presented in the report – how it is to be laid out and which charts, formulas, formatting, macros and other logic are to be used.

BIRT Spreadsheet Designer

Once the report design is complete, the report author can publish the produced report executable to the Actuate Reporting Server, called as iServer. The iServer manages all deployment aspects such as security, scheduling, versioning, presentation, etc. Once the report executable is published to the iServer, users with the right privileges can schedule the report; execute it on-demand to produce a fresh spreadsheet report document containing the latest data; or, elect to view a previously generated spreadsheet report document that is cached on the iServer. In all cases the user will receive an Excel file that is downloaded to the user’s desktop and is automatically opened within Microsoft Excel.

Sample Excel produced by BIRT Spreadsheet

Sample Excel produced by BIRT Spreadsheet

Sample Excel produced by BIRT Spreadsheet

Sample Excel produced by BIRT Spreadsheet

Self Service Dashboards

Along with the adhoc report and adhoc analysis, you can now create an adhoc dashboard.

Dashboards

Creating dashboards is extremely simple. All you need to do is select a dashboard title, layout design, and appropriate theme. Once that is done, you can select the content of each of the components of the dashboard. This content can be a chart, report, or an analysis. The dashboard content can be filtered using a criteria selecting drop down filter.

Dashboard Designer

Using this new functionality, business users can now create rich dashboards on the fly.

The core of the Pentaho BI system comprises of the BI server that hosts all the BI components and provides the infrastructure for report scheduling, viewing, and user management. All the BI elements are systematically organized into a logical hierarchy of browsable folders called “Solutions”.  Its latest release, Pentaho 2.0, offers a sleek AJAX/Web 2.0 based user interface.

My evaluation of Pentaho 2.0 is based on the following components:

Pre-Published reports

Pentaho provides the ability to create pixel perfect reports using the Pentaho Reports Designer.

The reports designer provides all the functionality that comes with any standard report creation tool. For the non-technical folks that are not very comfortable with report creation it also offers a convenient and easy-to-use wizard-based report creation interface.

Once these reports are created, they can be easily deployed on the reporting server into one of the available solutions where they can be invoked by users on demand, run in background, or scheduled for periodic executions.

Ad-hoc Reports

Pentaho BI allows business users to dynamically (ad hoc) create reports and share them with colleagues and peers without having to rely on the IT department. A simple web-based wizard guides business users through the steps to create and publish ad hoc reports.

Dashboards

Pentaho provides all the facilities to create visual dashboards using JSP technology. Complex dashboards can be designed by connecting various individual elements in a simple JSP page. Alternatively, one can create dashboards without writing a single line of code using the Community Dashboard Framework. However I have not yet used the CDF.

Reporting Workflows

At the heart of the Pentaho BI server is the concept of process flow (referred to as Action Sequence). An action sequence is the smallest unit of work that the Pentaho server is capable of executing. Hence, every report on Pentaho (ad hoc or pre-published) is converted into an action sequence in order to be executed. An action sequence is am XML document with a .xaction extension. The concept is a little heavy to grasp in the beginning. But once you get a hang of it, the notion of a BI workflow allows you to do some of the most powerful things that can be expected on any BI system. Tasks like report bursting and exception-based reporting become pretty simple to achieve.  Pentaho has an eclipse-based design studio allows you to create complex action sequences with minimal effort (once you get over the learning curve).

Metadata Model

In order to simplify the complex relations between various data sources in a report, Pentaho provides a metadata model (similar to Universes in BusinessObjects). Ad hoc reports depend on such business centric data models to shield the business user from complex data relationships. The metadata editor provides all the functionality to achieve this.

Administration

Along with feature rich functionality for the end users, Pentaho BI also offers strong support for system administration. This is the key component where the enterprise edition offers more functionality than its free counterpart. The community version allows support for user management, roles management, data source management, service management, and public schedule management. The enterprise edition offers additional support for performance monitoring, audit monitoring, server clustering, and automated content cleaning.

To summarize this article, I must say I was impressed with the features offered by Pentaho. Its free community edition seems to offer more functionality than several commercial BI systems. It does have its share of bugs and problems, but nothing that you can’t live without. I have not yet evaluated its analytical report capabilities (Mondrian) as well as its data mining functionality (Weka). Pentaho also has a strong data integration system called Kettle. More on all of these topics very soon.  

More and more companies that are interested in improving the way they do business are adopting open source business intelligence. They are choosing open source for a variety of reasons, but primarily they have their eye on the bottom line. Because open source business intelligence gives companies options, they are able to save money on their business intelligence (e.g. Actuate, Pentaho, Jaspersoft) system. It also gives them the ability to improve the system they are working with as business intelligence technology grows and changes, instead of investing in a completely new platform. Because of this flexibility and forward motion, these companies are seeing opportunities for their businesses that they would have missed with an outdated system. Open source can also help your company get the best BI applications for your business.

Plenty of Options

Open source allows for adoption across application servers, in particular, Java-based applications because they are standardized and easy to merge with open source solutions and tools. Your company can choose the solutions that fit the business intelligence needs. Because you can pick and choose what you want to adopt, you aren’t saddled with an unwieldy system that does more or less than you need.

Right Price

The ability to have options will help your company save money on business intelligence solutions, but you will also see cost benefits of having a software infrastructure that permeates all the way through the application layers of your technology package. Your company can adjust your tech budget to reflect real world purchasing ability. You’ll also see financial rewards when the IT team is able to dedicate their time to more important issues than generating reports once you’ve invested in an open source reporting tool.

Innovative Technology

Because of the pricing structure of open source business intelligence, it is far easier for companies to upgrade their business intelligence systems as the technology improves. Updates will allow you to get the full benefits of your business intelligence program. Because you and other consumers will be more active in looking for ways to improve their systems, the competition among business intelligence providers to provide new technologies will increase, spurring innovation and creating new choices for consumers.

Finding the right business intelligence solution can be tricky, but open source technology makes it much easier for your company to find the right tools to generate the information you need. Open source business intelligence is becoming more and more beneficial to consumers as time goes by and because of your ability to get updates, you won’t have to wait for the next version of the tool you need to start reaping the benefits of having a business intelligence system.

As mentioned earlier, BI is a set of tools rather than a consolidated standalone vendor-specific framework. Nonetheless, every BI infrastructure must include elements of the following functionality:

Pre-Designed Reports

Also referred to as pixel-perfect reports, these are a set of predefined reports and queries that are considered fundamental for the bulk of decision making in an enterprise. These reports are carefully designed (by the IT department) and published online for the relevant teams to access and incorporate in their decision making process. Such reports are created and developed once and generated periodically either on demand or by pre-defined execution schedules (report bursting).

Ad Hoc Reports

Ad hoc reports, also known as user-defined reports, are reports created by business users to cater to a specific aspect of information and utilized by a smaller group of decision makers. With the ability to create and distribute simple ad hoc reports, business users can handle their reporting requirements without relying on the development capabilities of the IT department.

Business Dashboards

BI Dashboards are an indispensible part of an organization’s Executive Information System (EIS). Business dashboards communicate complex information quickly. They translate information from your various corporate systems and data into visually rich presentations using gauges, maps, charts, and other graphical elements to show multiple results together.

Analytic Reports

Analysis enables the guided exploration of information that pertains to all dimensions of a business, regardless of where the data is stored. BI users can analyze (drill down) and report against online analytical processing (OLAP) and dimensionally aware relational sources.

Data Mining

The term data mining today is characterized as the technology which incorporates the application of statistical techniques in conjunction with mathematical formulas that attempt to identify significant relationships between variables in historical business data, which can then be used to forecast, perform sensitivity analysis, (e.g., what happens to my target/dependent variable when I change one or more of my explanatory/independent variables) or just identify significant relationships that exist in the data at hand.

Apart from the above pillar stone features, every BI infrastructure must support fringe characteristics such as role based security, portal integration, and application integration via programmable APIs. To summarize, BI is a set of technologies and processes at all levels of an organization to access and analyze data. However, without competent people to interpret the information and act on it, business intelligence achieves nothing. Thus, business intelligence is less about technology than about creativity, culture, and whether people view information as a critical asset. Too great a focus on BI technology can easily sabotage BI initiatives in any organization.