Analysis of Open Source Business Intelligence Suites

Pedro Ribeiro, Jorge Bernardino

Abstract Organizations are all looking to increase revenue, lower expenses, and improve profitability by improving efficiency and effectiveness in their business processes and overall performance. Business Intelligence tools and technologies form the major components of the foundation that supports and enables such competitive differentiation. Open source software has become a force in the commercial software industry and open source business intelligence has matured to the point where organizations can evaluate to see whether it meets basic requirements, particularly when providing a low-cost solution. Recently, Open Source BI (Business Intelligence) platforms have also been gaining attention, as users of proprietary BI applications face increasing licensing costs. This paper explores open source approach to Business Intelligence, evaluating and comparing three of the most used open source business intelligence suites: OpenI, Pentaho and SpagoBI. Index Terms Business intelligence, Cost-benefit analysis, Open source

1 INTRODUCTION nformation is considered the most valuable asset of any organization regardless of the size of the organization. Every operation that organizations perform generates lots of raw data. This raw data must be converted into useful information for decision makers in order to improve the performance of the organization. A Data Warehouse (DW) is an information repository that aggregates the information scattered throughout the organization in a convenient way to query and explore. Business Intelligence handles the exploration of the data stored in a Data Warehouse in order to support the decision making process. Nowadays, there are some mature open source business applications and platforms, in the sales, finance and operational areas [1]. In the process of developing a DW solution, one important factor to consider is the output of that solution, namely, the Business Intelligence (BI) platform to use. Without the BI part, the DW is mostly useless. The variety and features of the Open Source Business Intelligence platforms have greatly evolved in the last five years [2], [3]. The quantity and, more important, the quality of available open source packages have increased and they are
P. Ribeiro is with the IPC/ISEC - Instituto Superior de Engenharia de Coimbra, Dept. de Engenharia Informtica e Sistemas, Rua Pedro Nunes, 3030-199 Coimbra, Portugal. E-mail: a9905097@deis.isec.pt. J. Bernardino is with IPC/ISEC - Instituto Superior de Engenharia de Coimbra, Dept. de Engenharia Informtica e de Sistemas, Rua Pedro Nunes, 3030199 Coimbra, Portugal. E-mail: jorge@isec.pt.

now a viable alternative to common commercial solutions. An open source BI platform is a unified system that lets the user feels like using a single BI solution, while reducing the overhead for the development and management of each application [4]. Some of the open source BI platforms follow a model called Commercial Open Source, also known as Open Core, in which the most advanced features are coded under a closed source license. This model usually gives birth to two or more editions of the same product: the Community edition which includes only the open sourced functionalities and the Enterprise or Full edition, including all the features, and sold, like any other commercial product. Other open source BI platforms follow the so-called Free and Open Source model, FLOSS (Free/Libre/Open Source Software), in which all the functionalities are available under an open source license, like GNU Public License (GPL) or a BSD-style license. These platforms don't usually have more than one edition. In this paper we concentrate our work on the evaluation of FLOSS model solutions and the Community Edition of open source BI platforms. The evaluated platforms are Pentaho Business Intelligence Server Community Edition 3.5.0 (Pentaho), SpagoBI 2.4.0 (Spago) and OpenI 2.0 (OpenI). All of them were tested using the demos and packages available at the respective web sites. The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. In section 2, we describe the Business Intelligence platforms. Section 3 presents the evaluation of the three demo

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packages of the BI suites: OpenI, Pentaho and SpagoBI. Section 4 presents the experiments with the standard packages of the different suites. Section 5 reviews related work in open source Business topic. Finally, section 6 contains concluding remarks and future work. 2 OPEN SOURCE PLATFORMS BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE

In this section, a description of the three open source BI platforms tested is presented, and a summary is offered, focusing on the public available demos. Open Source Software / Free Software (OSS/FS) (also abbreviated as FLOSS) has risen to great prominence. Briefly, FLOSS programs are those whose license allows the user to run and modify the program at will, including the right to redistribute copies of both the original and the modified versions. This kind of license usually require that copyright notices are maintained but don't require royalty payments [5]. There are a multitude of FLOSS licences, with varying degrees of openness or freedom, but all those licenses give open source software the possibility of being freely downloaded and used for any purpose that the user wishes, even if the developers never intended or predicted such uses. Redistribution, modification and unrestricted access to source code are also some possibilities present in every FLOSS license. Nowadays, if a business enterprise has the needed skills to implement, use and maintain the desired application, there are almost certainly one or two options of enterpriseclass open source software. Some common benefits associated with open source software include: Short Product Cycle: Software evolves most quickly when there are no restrictions to what programmers are allowed to do with the source code for a piece of software. If programmers can read, modify and redistribute software at will, and more users are allowed to try that software, improvements, bug corrections and general feature adoption tend to happen faster. This effect is sometimes called Linus' Law and usually postulated as Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow [6]. The short product cycle and the fact that this software doesn't have license costs allows users to test and try new versions, and give feedback to developers more quickly than with traditional commercial software. Reliable and Secure: By giving access to source code to anyone, the chances that a security flaw is exposed increase, and that

flaws can't be easily covered up and made secret. Fixes are also more easily obtained because one doesn't need to wait for an official release or such mechanism common in proprietary software. Anybody with the proper knowledge can devise a fix and patch the software. Freedom from Vendor Lock-In: Free and open source licenses, by their very nature, turns vendor lock-in in a non-issue. Allowing each and everyone to review the source code, assures the user that if some vendor vanishes other people can follow the work. No Sales or License Costs: There are no costs, regarding software licensing, allowing users to evaluate the software nearly for free. If companies have internal knowledge they can achieve a nearly cost-free implementation of the desired software. If a company needs to contract external services, their budget is not impacted by software acquisition costs, typical of commercial applications. Thus, the money saved can be invested in other services, like training, hardware or other business requests. While Linux, Apache, MySQL, and other open source software are routinely deployed in the enterprise, open source BI solutions are just at the point where they are sufficient mature to satisfy user requirements. The major attraction of open source is to save time and money, but theres an extra dimension to open source BI open source BI allows interaction and evolution in a way that proprietary BI does not. We tested the public available demos, which can be downloaded through each platform website OpenI [7], Pentaho [8] and SpagoBI [9]. It must be noted that none of the open source BI platforms evaluated provides a Database Management System (DBMS). The example data on the demo is stored in a SQLite database [10], but connectors to several DBMS are available. Being a Java based application one can use any JDBC driver to access other data sources, including Oracle, Microsoft SQLServer, MySQL and PostgreSQL. 2.1 Pentaho Business Intelligence Server Community Edition 3.5.0 This platform follows the Commercial Open Source model of development. Its implementation is controlled by Pentaho Corporation [8], and is distributed in two distinct editions: The Community Edition, and the Enterprise Edition. The Community Edition is the Open Source version while the Enterprise Edition is a commercial product that includes not only all the features of the Community Edition, but

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also some more advanced tools to help the development of Business Intelligence Models and Reports and a contract support. The available demo includes the Business Intelligence Server Community Edition, some sample data (the Foodmart Database), the Apache Tomcat Application Server and other required software needed to run the demo. The only piece of software the user needs to provide is the Java Runtime. Besides the Business Intelligence Server, the demo also includes the Administration Console, a separate application to manage the BI Server. They are both web applications running on top of the Apache Tomcat. Other Java Application Server platforms, like JBoss are also supported. Other main components of the Pentaho solution are the Mondrian OLAP engine, the Pentaho Data Integration (former Kettle) ETL software, the JFreeReport Reporting Engine and the Weka Data Mining modules. After installation, the user should check whether the environment variables related to the Java Runtime are properly set and only then execute the script to start the application. To stop the demo, the user runs another of the scripts provided in the package. This demo, and other Pentaho software is available on Pentaho's project page in SourceForge [11]. Furthermore are offered other open source components: Report Designer, Design Studio, Metadata Editor, Schema Workbench and Aggregation Designer. These components can be downloaded from Pentaho's site [8] and are succinctly described in Table 1. TABLE 1 PENTAHO OPEN SOURCE COMPONENTS
Component Report Designer [12] Function Design reports and create Pentaho Action Sequences (Pentaho BI platform executables). ETL component. Editor and debugger of reports and Action Sequences. Edits data warehouse metadata conforming to the Common Data Warehouse model. Designer for Mondrian OLAP Schemas Utility to design and generate aggregate tables. Executes and displays the reports. OLAP Server Data Mining Component

2.2 SpagoBI 2.4.0 SpagoBI is one of the platforms that follow the FLOSS model of development, so, there is only one edition of the program. The SpagoBI project is backed by an Italian company: Ingegneria Informatica S.p.A. [15], but developed by an open community around the world. Like Pentaho, this project is based on the Java language and JSP technology and uses Apache Tomcat or JBoss as the Application Server, Mondrian as the OLAP server and Weka for Data Mining. Coupled with Mondrian, we can find JPivot or JPalo OLAP clients. JPivot can also be used with a range of XMLA (XML for Analysis) Servers, for example Microsoft Analysis Services. SpagoBI includes both BIRT [16] and JasperReports [17] reporting engines, and also a reporting engine, developed in-house, with georeferencing capabilities, GeoReport [9]. The Extract-Transform-Load (ETL) functions are provided by Talend Open Studio [18]. The available demo includes, in addition to all of these components, the Apache Tomcat server, some example data and pre-made reports and dashboards. The user must provide the Java Runtime. To start and stop SpagoBI demo, the user runs the relevant scripts included in the package. The administration of this BI solution is included in the main program, through the use of a predefined user (biadmin) and the user view is available through the use of the technical user login (biuser). The repository for SpagoBI can be found at [19], and includes not only the demo, but also the SpagoBI Server and all the components described in Table 2. TABLE 2 SPAGOBI COMPONENTS
Component BIRT Report Engine Geo Engine GeoReport Engine JasperReport Engine JPalo/Mondrian Engine JPivot/Mondrian Engine JPXMLA Engine QbE Engine Function Reporting engine. Geographic referencing component. Allows the development of GIS applications. Reporting engine. Mondrian-based OLAP Server Mondrian-based OLAP Server. XMLA-based OLAP Server. Allows the development of queries in a graphical approach. The ETL component. The Data Mining component.

Data Integration Design Studio

Metadata Editor

Schema Workbench Aggregation Designer

Report Engine Mondrian OLAP Server [13] Weka DataMining [14]

Open Talend Studio Weka Engine

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2.3 OpenI 2.0 This project is the result of the release of a previous BI application under an Open-Source license in 2005, and is the less known project. Not like Pentaho and SpagoBI there is no company backing OpenI, and all the development is handled through SourceForge [20]. The development model followed by the OpenI project is also the FLOSS model, so there is only one edition of the software. Programmed in Java and using JSP technology, the components used by OpenI include the ubiquitous Mondrian OLAP server and the JasperReports reporting engine. OpenI doesn't include an ETL tool, or a Data Analysis component. The development team of this platform was more focused in the Software as a Service, SaS concept than in the more usual Business Intelligence fullfledged application. Like the other platforms analyzed in this paper, OpenI runs on top of an application server. However, it only supports Apache Tomcat and JBoss. The available demo includes the server software, the OLAP engine, the Reporting engine, some example data and also the needed Java Runtime (both the Linux and Windows versions are present in the downloadable package). Like SpagoBI, the administration is available through a special administration user. The available demo only includes this special user as a login option. In the OpenI software repository [20], we can only find the OpenI server. Neither code nor binaries are available for the individual components, only for the whole bundle. 2.4 Platforms summary Table 3 shows the main modules that comprise the three platforms under analysis concerning to: the development model, language, application server, ETL tool, OLAP server, Reporting engine and Data Mining component. Many of the modules are shared, some of them are evolutions of a different open source project, others have been developed internally and belong to the same software house that is charge of the platform (JasperReport is the most widespread modules for BI reporting, while GEO is the module developed by SpagoBI team for georeferenced analysis) - reusing and sharing underlie open source software development. Table 3 also shows that some modules are standard de facto within open source BI: in particular the Mondrian OLAP engine and the JPivot graphical interface are the standard solutions for OLAP, while Weka is the standard data mining module.

TABLE 3 SUMMARY OF PLATFORMS

Development Model Language Application Server ETL tool OpenI Full Open Source Java Tomcat, JBoss none Pentaho Commercial Open Source Java Tomcat, Glassfish, JBoss Pentaho Data Integration Mondrian JFree Reports SpagoBI Full Open Source Java Tomcat, Glassfish, JBoss Open Talend Studio Mondrian BirtReport and JasperRe ports Weka

OLAP server Reporting engine

Mondrian Jasper Reports

Data Mining component

none

Weka

3 PLATFORMS' EVALUATION In the current work we only report and summarize the evaluations concerning the platforms, while we do not study in depth all the characteristics of each single BI. The comparison is centred on the following key aspects: user interface, features and usability criteria. The demos were run on a laptop computer, under the Debian GNU/Linux operating system, with an Intel Core2 Duo T5550 processor and a Hitachi 160 GB hard drive. We used the demos downloaded from each projects repository and set up according to the installation instructions. To run the demo, it was necessary to execute the included relevant script. As the Pentaho and SpagoBI demos require a Java Runtime Engine provided by the user, care must be taken in order to check the setting of the relevant environment variables, namely the JAVA_HOME or JRE_HOME variables, since these variables control the Java Environment that the demos will use. Since all demos are distributed with the Apache Tomcat application server, after the demo starts, the user can point a web browser to port 8080 of the machine (localhost) to login into the program. As all the evaluated platforms use the same OLAP engine and example data, no performance tests were made. 3.1 User Interface Although the three applications are web applications, and the user interface shares common concepts, there are also substantial differences among the three. Starting at the login screen, each platform philosophy is evident, as shown in Figures 1, 2 and 3.

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oriented approach by putting the menu at the top. OpenI is different from the other suites, since it cannot display the data table and the chart for an analysis at the same time. The user interface of all the platforms is internationalized and allows a set of few languages. OpenI provides English, Hindi and Brazilian Portuguese as available languages. Pentaho offers English, German, French, Spanish and Japanese, but only in the administrator area, and SpagoBI includes Italian, English, French and Spanish.
Fig. 1. Screenshot of OpenI demo login screen.

3.2 Business Intelligence Suites Features The exploration of the demos provides some insight into the features of the platforms. OpenI is the simplest of the three evaluated platforms, and the one that shows fewer features. The demonstrated capabilities of OpenI are focused on the analysis and drilldown tables and the generation of simple reports, while Pentaho and SpagoBI present more advance reporting features, like dashboards, key performance indicators (KPI) and geo-referencing analysis. In all platforms, reports and analysis properties can be viewed and adjusted, including the MDX queries on which they are based. Also, the exporting of reports, data tables and charts to other formats are available. Some differences between BI suites are the available export formats, the flexibility of the report formats and the type of charts presented. Charts are updated in real time to reflect the current view of the data table. While Pentaho and SpagoBI present the data table and chart simultaneously, OpenI only allows one of the views at the same time. Figures 4, 5 and 6 present an illustration of these differences. In Figure 4 we can see the chart display of an OpenI analysis, on Figure 5, the more complex and rich Pentaho analysis display. Figure 6 shows SpagoBIs KPI illustration.

Fig. 2. Screenshot of SpagoBI demo login screen.

Fig. 3. Screenshot of Pentaho demo login screen.

OpenI presents a simple login form (see Figure 1), with only the administrative user as a choice, and Pentaho (see Figure 3) displays a more complex login form with drop-downs to choose from a variety of users in the roles of user or administrator. SpagoBI also shows a traditional login form (see Figure 2), but allows the user to choose a role as administrator or technical user. After logging in the platforms, the main options are shown to the user. OpenI and Pentaho offer a more traditional web-oriented interface, with the menu running down the left side, while SpagoBI take a more desktop-

Fig. 4. OpenI analysis chart.

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The charts and data tables can be exported to the PDF and Excel formats. Reports can also be exported to PDF, but there is no obvious way to change the layout. 3.4 Pentaho Features Pentaho suite presents a careful designed interface and good charting and graphical capabilities. The available sample analysis show the data table and corresponding chart in the same view. As Pentaho uses the JFreeReports component, the MDX query, chart properties and other controls are available. Export to Excel format is possible with a single click, but only the data is exported. These component's charts can be one of 16 types, including multi-chart options like Pie by Row and Pie by Column. If designed and viewed outside a report, there are eleven available chart types, from simple line charts to time series and bubble charts. On the dashboard area, several sample dashboards are shown, including one illustrating the possible connection to Google Maps for geo-referencing analysis. The reporting capabilities of Pentaho are very good, allowing the definition of some parameters that can be changed at run-time. The reports can be exported to five different formats: HTML, PDF, CSV, XLS and RTF. Multiple BI developers samples are also included, showing some more advanced aspects of Pentaho deployment. Included are some complex reports, MDX queries and even web service examples. Pentaho offers other programs to build and develop reports and analysis, but not on this demo. 3.5 SpagoBI Features The approach of SpagoBI is somewhat different from the other two platforms. This BI suite has a modular design, in which the modules, or engines, can be activated or deactivated by the administrator. Several engines are provided in this demo, ranging from the reporting engines to the KPI engines, which provide Key Performance Indicators to allow the development of dashboards. Since SpagoBI uses the same JasperReports reporting engine as Pentaho, its capabilities are very similar. Dashboards, data mining scenarios and geo-referenced reporting are all included in the demo. All this reports can be exported to PDF, Excel, JPG, CSV and XML formats. Chart types include some mixed types like bars and lines. Eleven different types are shown on the demo. The development of new documents is somewhat confuse, with a lot of

Fig. 5. Pentaho analysis display.

Fig. 6. SpagoBI KPI feature.

For each sample, drill-down chart and data tables are provided and a dozen of chart types, including vertical bars and pie charts are available. The chart type can be changed on-the-fly and reflects the current view on the data table, however only one of the views can be active. The analysis and respective chart parameters and properties can be viewed and changed by looking at the Properties, including the MDX query that sustains the report. Both the data table and the chart can be exported easily to a variety of formats, including PDF and Excel. In the next sections we will describe in more detail each one of the Open Source BI platforms. 3.3 OpenI Features Although lacking the more advanced features of the other suites, OpenI has the basic Business Intelligence capabilities of analysis and reporting. It uses the Mondrian OLAP engine to get data from a Data Warehouse and create the needed OLAP cubes for drilldown analysis. OpenIs charting capabilities are simple, with a dozen different chart types, including, horizontal and vertical bars, area and pie charts. The charts reflect the current view of the data table, and are updated on-the-fly according to the changes on the data view.

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steps to be executed in order to achieve the desired result. 3.6 Usability Regarding the usability of the platforms, both Pentaho and SpagoBI present the point-ofview of the BI developer (administration) and the BI user (user). OpenI only shows the administration view on this demo. No formal usability test was made, but we have done some evaluation regarding the execution of the demo. In all the three platforms, the available documents - reports, analysis, dashboards and so on are built and viewed at different levels. The administrative user has the permissions necessary to create the documents, and the regular users are allowed to view those documents. The process of building the documents is different among the three platforms, with Pentaho using a different program to develop documents, and OpenI and SpagoBI using the same interface to develop and view documents. SpagoBIs document creation process is somewhat confused, because it has many steps, spread around several menus and interface elements. Its necessary to create or define each component that constitutes a document. These components are created through several different menu options and interface elements. To view a document on SpagoBI the user must choose the Execute option from a popup menu available by clicking on the document. In OpenI the process of creating documents is more straightforward than SpagoBIs. There is a menu option to develop a new report, and all the operations are carried on the same interface element. The visualization of the document is a matter of simply clicking on it. Pentaho uses different programs to design and develop reports and other documents. Those programs are not part of the demo and were not evaluated in this paper. In this demo, there is a step-by-step wizard that guides the user through the task of creating reports and analysis. To view a document, is a matter of double-clicking its name on the hierarchic tree of documents. 4 EVALUATION OF THE PACKAGES After the first impressions with the demos, some tests were made with the standard packages available. The evaluated points

were: the simplicity of installation, the available documentation and support. The standard packages were installed and deployed in an environment consisting of the standard Java Development Kit 1.6.0, the Apache Tomcat Application Server 6.0.26 and the MySQL database version 5.1.47. For all the platforms, some tinkering with roles and user permissions of the chosen Application Server is needed before the execution. Some troubles with the installation and deployment led us to find help like any other potential user, through user forums and web searches. Of the three platforms, the OpenI has just a wiki [21] and some short documents to help with the installation process. OpenI requires an already installed and configured OLAP server before execution. SpagoBI has a forum [22], but it's somewhat confusing. The fact that this forum changed places and, obviously, address adds to the problem. Besides the forum, there are also mailing lists and a wiki [23]. Pentaho has the most complete document and resource collection of the three platforms, including a forum (more active than Spago's) [24], a wiki [25], a FAQ collection and a newsletter [26]. Doesn't have mailing lists but the other resources are fairly complete. However, even with all these resources, none of the platforms were installed properly on the test system. All of the packages were correctly deployed but none of them run successfully afterwards. Table 4 summarizes some of this information. TABLE 4 BI PLATFORM FEATURES
Features Installation Comment All the three platforms installed and deployed properly on the Application Server. Both OpenI and SpagoBI executed well, but Pentaho failed to start on the regular Application Server. Running a Pentaho bundle with tomcat worked. Both OpenI and SpagoBI have less documents available than Pentaho. As expected in a Commercial Open Source, the users of Community Edition don't get support from the official developer. The other two platforms have the usual selfhelp tools, like a wiki or forum.

Execution

Documentation

User support

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Even with some flaws, we think all these platforms are mature enough to be deployed in small and medium enterprises. The implementation cost of a BI solution based on any of these platforms is much lower than equivalent commercial products. The platform with most advanced features is SpagoBI. Pentaho does have some of those features, but only in their commercial edition. However, the most visual appealing platform is Pentaho and, with the added software to aid in the development and deployment of the BI solutions, this might be a better choice for most small and medium enterprises. 5 RELATED WORK There are no many works in open source BI platforms. We only know the papers of Matteo Golfarelli [4], and the survey of Christian Thomsen & Torben Pedersen [2], updated in 2008 [3]. Thomsen & Pedersens survey considers Open-Source software in the areas of ExtractTransform-Load (ETL), database management systems (DBMS), On-Line Analytical Processing (OLAP) servers and clients. It also refers in a very succinct mode, the existence of three Business Intelligence Suites: Pentaho, SpagoBI and JasperSoft. Neither Data Mining nor Application Integration tools are considered. Table 5 describes a summary of the software presented in [3]. The survey was conducted by collecting data about the tools through the internet. No actual installation or configuration of the software was made. TABLE 5 SOFTWARE EVALUATED IN [3]
Area ETL Software Apatar, Clover.ETL, ETL Integrator, KETL, Kettle (Pentaho Data Integration), Octopus, Palo ETL Server, Pequel, Scriptella, Talend Open Studio (JasperETL) Firebird, Ingres Database, LucidDB, MonetDB, MySQL, PostgresSQL Mondrian, Palo FreeAnalysis, JPalo Client, JMagallanes Olap & Reports, JPivot, JRubik, OpenI, REX

Also, Golfarelli evaluates the suites on the perspective of a joint work with BI consulting firms of Italy. His work focused on the availability of the platforms as an alternative to the commercial offerings, which is different of the focus of our work. 6 CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORK Business Intelligence has been a "high investment/high return" solution for a long time now. However, the way it was evaluated, sold, and implemented has priced proprietary BI out of the reach of most organizations. Cost considerations are driving interest in open source BI, but organizations should adopt new evaluation and implementation best practices to maximize cost savings and accelerate business benefits. Although open source BI platforms can be considered not as sophisticated as commercial ones, they got a sufficient level of reliability and must be considered a valid alternative to commercial suites. This is particularly true in small and medium-sized enterprises where the quantity of data and the workload are not critical points. Therefore, several companies are evaluating the use of open source BI in pilot projects where budget constraints are typically very tight. From our analysis, we conclude that Open Source Business Intelligence platforms are growing both in functionalities as in quality and visual appeal. Of the three platforms analyzed, OpenI is undoubtedly the less developed, and Pentaho is the most appealing. However, there are a few areas that are not included in the Pentaho demo, that show in the SpagoBI, like KPI and dashboards that, in a first approach, make someone believe that SpagoBI is more feature complete than Pentaho. All the three platforms announce multiple database support through JDBC drivers. As the three platforms all use the same OLAP engine (Mondrian), its capabilities are quite similar. We can conclude that, from the point-ofview of a possible implementation, Pentaho might be a better choice, because it has more documentation and resources available. Regardless of the chosen platform, strong Java skills and deep understanding of the Application Server work model are a must to deploy such software. However, Pentaho is not a true Open source solution, since most of the advanced features are only available through a commercial business model. If we look at a real Open Source Business Intelligence Platform, we should turn our efforts to

DBMS

OLAP Server OLAP Client

The Golfarelli work evaluates the JasperSoft, SpagoBI and Pentaho Business Intelligence Suites but they consider the versions available on December 2008, so, it is already more than a year old, which is a considerable amount of time in the software industry.

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SpagoBI. As future work, we propose to develop and test a prototype simulating a real world application environment. REFERENCES
[1] Ernesto Damiani, Fluvio Frati, Cristina Monteverdi. Open Source BI Adoption, January 2009, available at http://www.ow2.org/xwiki/bin/download/BusinessIntelligen ce/Documents/OSBIadoption-v10.pdf. Christian Thomsen and Torben Bach Pedersen. A survey of open source tools for business intelligence. DBTechnical Report 23, Institut for Datalogi, Aalborg Universitet, 2008. Christian Thomsen and Torben Bach Pedersen. A survey of open source tools for business intelligence, 7th International Conference, DaWaK 2005, Copenhagen, Denmark, August 22-26, 2005, pp.74-84. Matteo Golfarelli. Open source BI platforms: A functional and architectural comparison 11th International Conference, DaWaK 2009, Linz, Austria, August 31 September 2, 2009, pp.287-297. http://www.pa.icar.cnr.it/cossentino/ICT/ppt/S11%20%20Open%20Source%20Software.pdf Eric S. Raymond, The Cathedral and Bazaar, available at http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedralbazaar/cathedral-bazaar/ OpenI web site, http://www.openi.org/ Pentaho web site, http://www.pentaho.org/ SpagoBI web site, http://www.spagoworld.org/ SQLite web site, http://www.sqlite.org/ SourceForge Pentaho project, http://sourceforge.net/projects/pentaho/files/ SourceForge JFreeReport project, http://sourceforge.net/projects/jfreereport/files/ SourceForge Mondrian project, http://sourceforge.net/projects/mondrian/files/ SourceForge Weka project, http://sourceforge.net/projects/weka/files/

[2]

[3]

[15] Engineering Ingegneria Informatica, S.p.A., http://www.eng.it/ [16] BIRT web site, http://www.eclipse.org/birt/ [17] JasperReports web site, http://jasperforge.org/projects/jasperreports [18] Talend web site, http://www.talend.com/ [19] SpagoBI software repository, http://forge.ow2.org/project/showfiles.php?group_id=204 [20] SourceForge OpenI project, http://sourceforge.net/projects/openi/files [21] OpenI wiki, http://wiki.openi.org/ [22] SpagoBI Forum, http://forge.ow2.org/forum/?group_id=204 [23] SpagoBI wiki, http://wiki.spagobi.org/xwiki/ [24] Pentaho forum, http://forums.pentaho.com/ [25] Pentaho wiki, http://wiki.pentaho.com/ [26] Pentaho newsletter, http://community.pentaho.com/newsletter/ Pedro Ribeiro studied Computer Science at ISEC (Instituto Superior de Engenharia de Coimbra) and attained his Bachelors degree in 2003. Having a general interest in Databases and Open Source software, returned to ISEC in 2009 to pursuit his Masters degree in computer Science under the orientation of Prof. Jorge Bernardino. Jorge Bernardino initially studied Electrical Engineering at the University of Coimbra, Portugal and attained his licenciatura degree in 1987. In 1994 he attained the Masters degree in Computer Science. He received is PhD in Computer Engineering from the University of Coimbra in 2002 with the thesis Techniques for Increasing the Performance and Availability of Data Warehouses. Currently is Professor Coordenador at ISEC (Instituto Superior de Engenharia de Coimbra) of the Polytechnic of Coimbra. He is member of Software and Systems Engineering (SSE) group of Centre for Informatics and Systems of the University of Coimbra (CISUC) research centre. His main research areas are data warehousing, business intelligence, on-line analytical processing (OLAP) and e-learning.

[4]

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[7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14]

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