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.
Creating Dynamic Sizing Charts with Pentaho Report Designer.
Posted under Open Source, Pentaho, Report Designer, Tutorials, Visualisation
Tip: Displaying Multi Parameter Values with Pentaho Report Designer.
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.
Pentaho Report Designer and Excel Data Sources.
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.
Creating Cascade Parameters with Pentaho Report Designer 3.5.
Posted under Open Source, Pentaho, Report Designer, Tutorials
Cascade parameters provide a way of managing large amounts of data in reports. You can define a set of related parameters so that the list of values for one parameter depends on the value chosen in another parameter.
In this example I will be using the Steel Wheels sample data to create a report which will display a list of customers using two parameters: a drop down parameter which will contain a distinct list of countries which will then filter another drop down parameter which contains cities which belong to the country.
Parameter Types with Pentaho Report Designer 3.5.
Posted under Open Source, Pentaho, Report Designer, Tutorials
Pentaho Report Designer 3.5 came with nine new pre built parameters. Below is a quick overview of the nine parameters. Each overview includes:
- Screenshot and description
- How to setup your parameter query
- How to setup your report query to accept the parameter
Creating Parameters with Pentaho Report Designer.
Posted under Open Source, Pentaho, Report Designer, Tutorials
With the release of Pentaho Report Designer 3.5 users can create parameters through the designer rather than having to build a xaction which at times could be messy and confusing. Here is a tutorial on how you can create a basic parameter with Pentaho Report Designer 3.5.
If you aren’t already aware Doug Moran (Pentaho’s Community Leader) has already created a set off screen casts showing off features of Pentaho Report Designer 3.5.
Publishing Content with Pentaho 3.5.
Posted under BI Server, Open Source, Pentaho, Report Designer, Tutorials
For those starting out with Pentaho it can be confusing on how to publish content (reports, ETL jobs etc.) to Pentaho Business Intelligence (BI) server. I have put together a guide which outlines the steps you will need to enable publishing and also an example of how you can use Pentaho Report Designer (PRD) to publish reports.
Pentaho Solutions Review.
Posted under BI Server, Open Source, Pentaho, Report Designer
I was about to do a chapter by chapter review of Roland Bouman and Jos van Dangen‘s masterpiece “Pentaho Solutions – Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing with Pentaho and MySQL” but since I started reading it I haven’t been able to put it down. It is definitely a must for anyone who is interested or currently working with Pentaho.
Because this book just oozes with awesomeness I have been able to shorten my review to three words “buy it now“.
Survey Scale charts with Pentaho Report Designer.
Posted under Open Source, Pentaho, Report Designer, Tutorials
After the new release of Pentaho’s Report Designer 3.5 (PRD) I thought I would get stuck into trying out some of the new charting features, of which Survey Scales (and of course Sparklines) interested me the most. Survey Scales are a way of graphically representing values on a predefined scale i.e. survey responses.
Below is a tutorial which I have put together on how to implement Survey Scales within a report using Pentaho’s Report Designer 3.5.