Posted under BI Server, Pentaho, Tutorials
I have noticed that the use of guides/tutorials have been constant since I last updated them for Pentaho’s Business Intelligence Stack 3.7. Now that Pentaho has reached 4.x I’m putting out the call to see if anyone is interested in having the guides updated for 4.x?
Post a comment and let me know – the more comments the more I might update 
Posted under News
Saiku is a modular open-source analysis suite offering lightweight OLAP which remains easily embeddable, extendable and configurable. Our RESTful server connects to existing OLAP systems, which then powers user-friendly, intuitive analytics via our lightweight JQuery based frontend.
Find out more here!
Posted under BI Server, News, Pentaho, Tips, Tutorials
This guide has been updated and works with the latest version of Pentaho BI Server 3.7.
Posted under BI Server, Pentaho, Tutorials
Yep, you read right, I have now updated the guide so that it now includes Microsoft SQL Server 2005+. Big thanks goes out to Roland Bouman who sent me the necessary configurations files and drivers needed for this to work, so head over to his blog and give him a hug or just thank him.
You can grab a copy of the guide in Google Docs format and the SQL Script Pack at the projects page.
As always please let me know if you find any errors and also if you would like to see any further additions to guides and support for other databases.
Prashant.
Posted under BI Server, Open Source, Pentaho, Tutorials
This guide has been tested and works with the latest version of Pentaho BI Server 3.6.
Posted under Data Integration, Open Source, Pentaho, Tutorials
Using arguments with Pentaho Data Integration (PDI) transformations are extremely handy when trying to pass through dynamic information. In this tutorial I will show how you can implement variables (denoted by ?) within SQL statements using Table input steps. Along with using variables I also cover how to copy and get rows from the result (memory), how to use system information and debugging steps. This tutorial was done with version PDI 3.2.0.
Posted under Open Source, Pentaho, Report Designer, Tutorials, Visualisation
Pentaho Report Designer’s (PRD) charting capability is great – it has numerous charts to choose from and the formatting is extremely flexible. However I did have a problem with charts represent large data sets. For example I had a list of countries and a bar chart showing the population for each country, users were able to view one or more countries at a time using a multi value list parameter. The problem occurred when there were too many countries, the chart’s labels became unreadable. One method was to create a chart which had a dynamic width depending on the amount countries a user selected.
Posted under Data Integration, Pentaho, Reviews
Recently I was given the chance to review Maria Carina Roldan’s new book “Pentaho Data Integration 3.2 – Beginners Guide”. Maria is an active member of the community and be found on the forums under the (surprise, surprise) Pentaho Data Integration (PDI) section.
As I had been given an ebook to review it was hard to sit down and read through it easily – it just isn’t the same as the real thing. Generally the book is meant for beginners (as the title suggests) as it covers the basics and some intermediate topics of Pentaho’s Data Integration tool. The best thing about this book is that each chapter uses ‘real-life’ data scenarios i.e. football game results and backs it up with quick pop quiz’s to test your PDI knowledge.
I recommend the book for both beginner and intermediate users of PDI and is a great to keep handy on your desk for quick reference. The book covers many different areas but some of the main topics include: transformations and jobs, JavaScript, databases, error handling and using repositories.
So what are you waiting for? Head over to Packt Publishing and grab yourself a copy!
Posted under Pentaho, Report Designer, Tips, Tutorials
Multi list parameters (multi list values and multi selection buttons) are a great way of letting a user filter a report on one or more values at once. Recently I came across a situation where I had to display these values in a friendly format. This tip will outline a method I used to display friendly formatted parameter values of a multi list parameter inside a report using Pentaho Report Designer 3.6.
Posted under Pentaho, Report Designer, Tutorials, Visualisation
Last week I had a regular Excel/Access user approach me with a problem:
I have 40 sale campaigns. I need to put together a quick presentation (as a PDF) which will show 2 key metrics (New and Loss revenue) for each of the 40 sale campaigns. Do you know of a quick way I can produce this presentation?
I thought this would the perfect opportunity to show off Pentaho Report Designer (PRD) as an alternative to Mircosoft Excel, Access or other big BI vendors. Below is a step by step guide on how I accomplished this.