Here’s the scenario. You’ve got a table in MySQL for reporting that has a few million rows, and is denormalized for reporting. You’ve got a Pentaho Report that is querying this MySQL table. You have two problems with the current report.

MySQL is fundamentally designed to be an OLTP database and while it does a fantastic job at that, its data warehouse features were built as “bolt on” additions. Can it be used for BI? Absolutely, I’ve used it a many customer sites. Does DynamoDB provide a better

What if you could evaluate, deploy and maintain a Data Warehouse (DW) and Business Intelligence (BI) solution for up to 90% less than the cost of proprietary software? What if you can find a solution that has been adopted by customers in all industries and is technically sound and scalable? 

You can, with open source Data Warehousing from MySQL and Business Intelligence from Pentaho.

Join this webcast to find out about real world BI/DW deployment strategies that that offer you robust capabilities, yet with a lower total cost of ownership (TCO).  

The MySQL and Pentaho solution has been proven in diverse deployments, from small companies to large enterprises. The subscription support model aligns customer and vendor interests, lowering both your costs and project risks. Join this webcast and learn how to be successful in your BI/DW

What if you could evaluate, deploy and maintain a Data Warehouse (DW) and Business Intelligence (BI) solution for up to 90% less than the cost of proprietary software? What if you can find a solution that has been adopted by customers in all industries and is technically sound and scalable? 

You can, with open source Data Warehousing from MySQL and Business Intelligence from Pentaho.

Join this webcast to find out about real world BI/DW deployment strategies that that offer you robust capabilities, yet with a lower total cost of ownership (TCO).  

The MySQL and Pentaho solution has been proven in diverse deployments, from small companies to large enterprises. The subscription support model aligns customer and vendor interests, lowering both your costs and project risks. Join this webcast and learn how to be successful in your BI/DW

What if you could evaluate, deploy and maintain a Data Warehouse (DW) and Business Intelligence (BI) solution for up to 90% less than the cost of proprietary software? What if you can find a solution that has been adopted by customers in all industries and is technically sound and scalable? 

You can, with open source Data Warehousing from MySQL and Business Intelligence from Pentaho.

Join this webcast to find out about real world BI/DW deployment strategies that that offer you robust capabilities, yet with a lower total cost of ownership (TCO).  

The MySQL and Pentaho solution has been proven in diverse deployments, from small companies to large enterprises. The subscription support model aligns customer and vendor interests, lowering both your costs and project risks. Join this webcast and learn how to be successful in your

Dear Kettle friends,

Will Gorman and Mike D’Amour, Senior Developers at Pentaho, are presenting Pentaho’s Google integration work at the Google I/O Developer Conference. (at the Sandbox area to be specific)   Yesterday, Pentaho announced that much.

Here are a few of the integration points:

• Google maps dashboard (available in the Pentaho BI server you can download)
• A new Google Docs step was created for Pentaho Data Integration Enterprise Edition
• Running (AVI, 30MB) the Pentaho BI server on

• Part I: Getting Started, Prerequisites, Installation and Configuration and Overview
  
  
  • Chapter 1: Quick Start: Pentaho PCI Examples
  
  
  • Chapter 2: Prerequisites
  
  
  • Chapter 3: Server Installation and Configuration
  
  
  • Chapter 4: The Pentaho BI Stack
  
  

Dear Kettle fans,

As expected there was a lot of interest in cloud computing at the MySQL conference last week.  It felt really good to be able to pass the Bayon Technologies white paper around to friends, contacts and analysts.  It’s one thing to demonstrate a certain scalability on your blog, it’s another entirely to have a smart man like Nicholas Goodman do the math.

Sorting massive amounts of rows is hard problem to take on.  Making it scale on low-cost EC2

Dear Kettle & MySQL fans!

I’m really looking forward to go to the MySQL User Conference next week, not just because I’m speaking in 2 sessions again, but perhaps also because these are “interesting” times for MySQL and Sun Microsystems.  Pivotal times it would seem.

Here are the 2 sessions I’m going to do:

• Cloud Computing with MySQL and Kettle : I’m particularly happy that MySQL accepted this session: it will demonstrate how easy it has become to do cloud computing exercises with tools like MySQL and Kettle.

• Starring Sakila: Data Warehousing Explained,

Dear reader,

In a little over 3 weeks, April 2nd and 3rd, we’re organizing a Pentaho Partner Summit at the Quadrus Conference Center in Menlo Park near San Francisco.

If you are (as the invitation describes) an “Executive, luminary, current or prospective partner from around the world” and if you come over you’ll meet myself, Julian Hyde and perhaps a couple of other architects as well.  That is outside of a host of other interesting people like Zack Urlocker (MySQL) and of course Richard Daley our CEO. We’ll be doing a couple of lengthy sessions on Kettle and Mondrian among other things.

See you

I had a customer recently who had very hierarchical data, with some complicated measures that didn’t aggregate up according to regular ole aggregation rules (sum, min, max, avg, count, distinct count). Now, one can do weighted averages using sql expressions in a Measure Expression these rules were complex and they also were dependent on the other dimension attributes. UGGGGH.

Come to that: their analysts had the pristine, blessed data sets calculated at different rollups (already aggregated to Company Regions). Mondrian though, is often too smart for it’s own good. If it has data in cache, and things it can roll up a measure to a higher level (Company Companies can be rolled up to Regions if it’s a SUM for instance) Mondrian will do that. This is desirable in like 99.9% of cases. Unless, you want to “solve” your cube and

Every BI installation has power users that just want “data dumps.” They may need the dumps for a variety of reasons:

• You’ve built crappy reports. They can’t get the information they need in *YOUR* reports.
• They need to feed the data into another system. They want to select all customers who bought product X in time period Y to send them a recall notice. Need a dump of email / addresses to send them the notice.
• They are addicted to Excel; they feel like a super hero whizzing through the data making fancy graphs and doing a few of their own ratios/calculations.
• They want to munge the numbers. They will export it to Excel, throw out the data that makes them look bad, and then present it to their boss with shiny positive results.

I had a customer who needed something to “feed

Since the very first time I downloaded the Pentaho suite I’ve been wailing, screaming, shouting, snarking that there absolutely MUST be a way to manage data sources that does not involve XML.

Well… Holy Shit. At just under 3 years it’s here (Pentaho Administration Console from 2.0.M3 build):

This is a most appreciated feature for those getting started with Pentaho! Thank you to the Pentaho

I’m back at my favorite spot at the Orlando airport:

This week has gone bye so fast it’s kinda scary.  I got dragged into one meeting after another design session after another knowledge transfer opportunity for 5 days in a row.  After our long working days, the discussions and talks just continued over dinner and beers.

It was great to meet everyone and as always we had a good time around the office and at the Ale House.  I even managed to stay sober this time around.  Well at least most of the time.

As always, the thing that struck me the most was how fast Pentaho changes.  It’s almost like visiting a different company every time I drop in.  Since I don’t see the day-to-day changes around the office, the difference between the first time I visited (15 people) and now (70+) is striking.  The office