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From olap-navigator
Welcome to Red Olap Navigator project!
About Olap Navigator
Olap Navigator is the web-based front-end for data warehouses. It allows IT departments of companies to set-up portal-like environment where staff and external data consumers may navigate enterprise data. Using Olap Navigator one can define easily accessible MDX-based interlinked dashboards, views and reports to present the data. Olap Navigator uses Google Web Toolkit as the UI widget library and Mondrian as the back-end to execute MDX queries. We test it mainly against Firebird databases, but it should work with any DBMS supported by Mondrian. Charts are created using jFreeChart library, geo data is presented using SVG and JavaScript. The tool was created because there was no other end user and programmer-friendly Open Source OLAP front-end. Olap Navigator is designed to surpass other front-end solutions in ease of use and quality.
How to configure
Olap Navigator generates the GUI for the user based on collection of XML files called "resources". Changing resources should have immediate effect, there no need to restart Olap Navigator to test your edits. The syntax for defining resources is specified in resources.xsd XML schema file, so you can see all the features available for your disposal there. Even though there are no examples available yet which would demonstrate you the full expressive power of Olap Navigator definitions, in data folder you can find sample bits and pieces of definitions which were used to create information systems for a bank, municipal administration and a city.
You can configure URI for the location of resources (Resource Catalog) using one of the following methods (in order of search precedence):
- biz.red_soft.olap.resource_catalog initialization parameter for MdxViewer servlet
- biz.red_soft.olap.resource_catalog Java system property (-D... option for java)
- OLAP_RESOURCE_CATALOG environment variable
Resource location URIs use Apache Commons VFS syntax. All relative links inside resource files, such as pointers to Mondrian schema files should resolve relative to Resource Catalog location.
November 2008 status
It has been almost a year since the original release of Olap Navigator by Red Soft Corporation. Huge amount of effort went into the code base since than, and a lot of new functionality is now available.
The changes include:
- support for the nested navigation views
- improved MS Excel exports
- server-side rendering of tables, for improved performance
- and many more new features and bugfixes.
On the infrastructure side, SourceForge CVS repository is now automatically synchronized with internal Red Soft SVN tree so you can always grab the most recent version.
We hope that you find Olap Navigator useful, and encourage you to contribute to its further development.
How to build and run
- Create root directory for your build (e.g. "C:\RON")
- checkout "navigator2" module from project CVS while in this directory
- >cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@olap-navigator.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/olap-navigator login
- >cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@olap-navigator.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/olap-navigator co navigator2
- Now you should have it there in navigator2 subdirectory ("C:\RON\navigator2")
- Check pre-requisites. You will need Java SDK 6, ANT 1.7 and the database engine. We work against Red Database 2.1 (based on Firebird 2.1), but any engine supported by Mondrian should work.
- Google Web Toolkit 1.5 (GWT) has to be installed as "gwt-windows" subdirectory of installation root (e.g. "C:\RON\gwt-windows")
- Install Mondrian 3.0.4 source package into Mondrian subdirectory ("C:\RON\Mondrian"),
- apply necessary Mondrian patch:
- >patch -p5 <mondrian-3.0.4-basic.diff
- and build its jar package using the following command:
- >build.bat jar
- You can now Build and run Olap Navigator module in GWT shell using ANT:
- >ant run
- If you than use usename "test" and password "test" to log in you should be able to see some very basic Olap Navigator functionality
Alternatively, you may download a binary WAR package, deploy it into servlet container (such as Apache Tomcat 6.0) and use the following URL to get Olap Navigator interface:
Nikolay Samofatov
Chief Technology Officer
Red Soft Corporation
