Recent changes to news

Replace JasperAnalysis UI with OpenI Plug-In

Sandeep Giri — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 07:43:48 -0000

I am happy to announce some fun and exciting changes at OpenI, and the alpha release of our team's work over last couple of months.

First - OpenI as a “BI platform” on its own will discontinue. Instead, we will use Pentaho and Jasper as our base platforms as needed. The approach is to release “OpenI plug-ins” for Jasper and Pentaho — so that they behave/appear in a manner very similar to OpenI.

Our first step in this direction is our "Plug-In" for Jasper that replaces its JasperAnalysis interface (which is basically JPivot as-is) with OpenI's UI. We believe this is a greatly improved UI for JasperServer users who need better interface for OLAP reporting and exploratory analysis .

You can also check out a live demo here: http://jasper.openi.org/ (Use the demo user account "user/user" or "demo/demo" to get logged into the system)

Currently this is an alpha release. You can download binaries or source code here - https://sourceforge.net/projects/openi/files/openi-jasper-1.0/

Let us know what you think. If you need help, etc. - use the sourceforge.net support forum at https://sourceforge.net/projects/openi/forums/forum/478298 .

The general thinking is - if you deploy Pentaho or Jasper with OpenI plug-in, you will get the lightness, easy-to-use look-and-feel, plus features that are unique to OpenI which are not available in Jasper or Pentaho (such as exploring cube data). We may also have to create our own installers that makes their installation/deployment process easier.

So – that’s the general direction.

Although Jasper was an easy pick for this first release, we are looking for similar approaches with Pentaho. Now, Pentaho already has efforts underway to replace JPivot UI (2 different approaches though – their open source version has Pentaho Analysis Tool (going through a rewrite at the moment, see http://code.google.com/p/pentahoanalysistool/ ), and proprietary version Pentaho Analyzer which is pretty decent (see http://www.pentaho.com/products/analysis/ ) — so not sure, how much value-add will it be to put OpenI’s UI as a Pentaho plug-in, but there might be other features that may be better suited for an OpenI plug-in for Pentaho.

Pentaho is pretty impressive because they take a platform approach, not just a reporting server. So even though each individual component may not be as fully developed as it needs to be – architecturally I think they have a sound approach. The work we will do with Pentaho will be more along the lines of how can we make it easier to use – whether that will be via plug-ins, or embedding Pentaho in our own build, we will try that out and see what makes sense.

Stay tuned, and of course, your feedback is much appreciated, as always.

Sandeep
Project Lead, OpenI.Org

OpenI 2.0 RC2 is Here

Sandeep Giri — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 04:53:32 -0000

Dear OpenI Community:

We just released OpenI 2.0-RC2. Our plan is to promote this RC to 2.0 general release in about 2 weeks, barring any new critical fixes. Big thanks to our team who have done a really great job.

There is also a demo available at http://demo.openi.org/openi (login is openi2/openi2)

And you can download it directly from: http://sourceforge.net/project/platformdownload.php?group_id=142873

Among the many new features and bug fixes in this release, a few stand out. First is the support for Attribute Hierarchy feature of Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) 2005. Almost all SSAS 2005 installations make use of this feature to get better performance, but prior versions of OpenI had trouble displaying data from OLAP cubes using feature. With RC2, OpenI fully supports this, which should make our SSAS 2005 users very happy. Also, we’d like to hear from those of you trying to use OpenI with SSAS 2008. We haven’t done much testing with SSAS 2008, and could use some help from our community in that regards.

Next, maximizing screen real estate in detailed analysis view has always been a key issue for data analyst users. With RC2, we have made the left navigator collapsible so that users can “stretch” the detail analysis view to the entire width of the screen. We think this is kind of cool, would love to hear your views on this (and other ideas to maximize screen real estate)

Here’re links to more details on the release:

* Release Notes: http://wiki.openi.org/openi-2-0/openi-20-RC2-release-notes
* Complete list of downloadable files: https://sourceforge.net/projects/openi/files/
* Help and Support Forum: https://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id=478298
* OpenI Wiki: http://wiki.openi.org

As always, we look forward to hearing your feedback.

best,

Sandeep
Project Lead, OpenI.Org

OpenI 2.0 RC1 released!

Sandeep Giri — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 12:07:51 -0000

Dear OpenI Community:

We are happy to announce the release candidate RC1 of OpenI 2.0 available for download.

There is also a demo available at http://demo.openi.org/openi (login is openi2/openi2)

We look forward to hearing your feedback on improving this release as we work on further testing of this version to get to general release. Please note that we are changing the license of OpenI to GPL v2 from this release. We will put a separate post to provide more information on that, but we feel that GPL is a much better option for us at the moment as it enables us to include other GPL-based components in our distribution.

Here're some more details on the release:

Files (available at: https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=142873&package_id=287874&release_id=680493\):

* openi-2.0-RC1-server.zip
This is the complete distribution containing all the components necessary to run OpenI with a single click. This is in response to the feedback from our community about simplifying our installation process. We are quite happy with the result, and would love to hear your feedback.

* openi-2.0-RC1-tomcat.zip contains binary build specific to Tomcat 6.0x
* openi-2.0-RC1-jboss.zip contains binary build specific to Jboss 4.2.2 (and can be used for other j2ee servers as well)
* openi-2.0-RC1-src.zip contains full source code to make your own custom builds

New features and enhancements (beyond what was in OpenI 2.0 Beta):

* Create a view-only analysis: An administrator can now create an analysis in view-only mode, meaning the users can view the analysis only in a "static" mode. This is in response to some feedback where users wanted to create analyses that had a fixed template, and also when they want to restrict how much data can be viewed by the user.

SF.Net Bug Fixes:

Bugs Fixed in 2.0-RC1:

* 2798368: Analysis is not saved under user's private folder.
* 2798348: Changing the chart labels for the x, y axis.
* 2798347: Sort tab is misspelt as Short.
* 2797876: Filter selection.
* 2797718: Dashboard items and Analysis File.
* 2797486: Restrict MDX and SQL tabs in properties window.
* 2797167: Chart Size doesn't resized on restoring down the browser.
* 2796897: Issues with multiple hierarchies on SSAS2005.
* 2796893: Display dimension name instead of selected hierarchy name.
* 2796889: Blue-dot with Slicer selection "ON" generates Soap Fault.
* 2796886: Swap Axes.
* 2796885: Scroll bars restricts page viewable area.
* 2796883: 'Clear All' option doesn't work.
* 2796882: 'Swap Axes' stops working.
* 2796880: Selection of members from diferent hierarchies has no effect.
* 2796879: Missing dashboard name in 'Customize Dashboard View' page.
* 2796876: Scroll bars in the dashboard not working properly.
* 2792060: Avoid "crowding" of x-axis data labels(New attributes called 'supress overcrowding is added to project.xml file which is by default is set as true)'
* 2791536: Same analysis multiple times on a particular dashborad Bug
* 2791127: OpenI: Mouse fly-over the Chart TAB is called Graph???
* 2783894: Display of Analysis options and Data Table options is off
* 2782725: Upload Existing Project Issue
* 2782640: Saving Analysis
* 2782639: Add option to delete the datasource object
* 2777367: Cancel button is saving the changes
* 2777036: Localization/Internationalization in OpenI
* 2749056: Need a view-only analysis mode (New attribute 'viewonly' is added to each analysis file for this fix)
* 2746639: Enable adding an analysis to dashboard from the analysis
* 2727956: chart series color configurable
* 2270169: No success message after upload a project
* 2270151: Validation Error: Value is required.
* 2270119: Do not see measures in explore data
* 2270111: Manage files theme
* 2270101: Feature request on right click
* 2120963: Enable OpenI logo customization (with enhancement - now project specific logo can be define during project setting which should be in related project folder)
* 2100685: Explore data showing broken images
* 2063987: Export menu problem on IE 6 and 7
* 1660871: PDF exports after login timeout, but pdf is invalid
* 1589814: Printable analysis view
* 1579816: formatString not working

Please pass the word around. And as always, we look forward to hearing from you.

cheers,

Sandeep

Sandeep Giri
Project Lead, OpenI.Org

Vote OpenI for sf.net Community Choice Awards

Sandeep Giri — Wed, 13 May 2009 23:45:05 -0000

Dear OpenI Community

Please support OpenI by voting for OpenI as the best project and/or best enterprise project in the SourceForge.Net Community Choice Awards.

http://sourceforge.net/community/cca09/nominate/?project_name=OpenI:%20Web%20App%20for%20Business%20Intelligence&project_url=http://openi.sourceforge.net/

Thanks!

Sandeep
Project Lead, OpenI.Org

OpenI 2.0 Beta Released

Sandeep Giri — Tue, 05 May 2009 18:35:50 -0000

Dear OpenI Community:

I am very happy to announce that we have the beta version of OpenI 2.0 available for download. I want to thank our entire development team for all the hard work they have put in for this release.

There is also a demo available at http://demo.openi.org/openi (login is openi2/openi2)

We look forward to hearing your feedback on improving this release as we work on further testing of this version to get to general release. Here're some more details on the release:

Files (available at: https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=142873&package_id=287874&release_id=680493\):

* openi-2.0-beta.tomcat.zip contains binary build specific to Tomcat 6.0x
* openi-2.0-beta.jboss.zip contains binary build specific to Jboss 4.2.2 (and can be used for other j2ee servers as well)
* openi-2.0-beta.src.zip contains full source code to make your own custom builds

New features and enhancements :

Beyond what was in OpenI 2.0 Alpha:

* Create New Project: Create new project option is added in the preferences menu that creates a new project by selecting a new template which can be either the duplicate of the current project or a new template. It also allows the users to define the category, project logo etc. for the project being created.
* Multiple Dashboards: an enhancement in the dashboard user interface which allows the user to create multiple project dashboards. this feature is available for the admin user only.
* Purge Files: this feature allows the admin user to purge the older files, the user is prompted the file type ( i.e file extension ) and the date , the files with that type and older than the given date will be purged

New Features from OpenI 2.0 Alpha:

* Completely re-written based on Spring, Java Server Faces and AJAX
* New enhanced UI layout, completely "ajaxified"
* New Drag and Drop Navigator UI to move attributes across rows, columns, and filters
* Enhanced repository system implemented. Now project contents can be deployed anywhere. No need to have project contents within the "webapps" folder of j2ee servers
* Application can be deployed into any JEE server
* QA feature added to validate the MDX statements for all analyses within a project with a single command
* Manage Feed feature enhancement - now contains split rows feature and better CSV file parser
* Default analysis for project - you can now specify default analysis for a project which is the first analysis displayed to a user immediately after user login
* Customizable chart series color (for non pie type chart only) - Now you can define custom color palettes for chart
* Excel export enhancement - OpenI now generates excel binary file which embeds chart in file itself (previously it contained a web link to the chart, which could result in broken image links)
* Dashboard UI enhancement - Better UI that enables displaying both table and chart view option
* Better File Manager - shows file in explorer style tree
* User/Role management (requires custom build from source) : now users/roles management can be done from OpenI

SF.Net Bug Fixes:

Bugs Fixed in 2.0-Beta:

* 2779635: UI issues in Autogenerate window.
* 2779626: Chart Properties dialog - rename tab Print into PDF export
* 2746089: Error in OpenI if there is no dimension in filter area
* 2728027: drillthrough green arrows only for supporting measures
* 2728012: copying folders on reports explore tab goes infinite loop
* 2728005: Allow creation of new project from the Application
* 2727999: Purge old drillthrough files in a project
* 2727992: Drag and Drop Ghosts on IE
* 2727984: Don't let any exception go up to application server
* 2727978: Add Print button capability to Dashboard screen
* 2727974: Error in saving analysis
* 2727913: Enhancement: Add support for online help text
* 2727898: Enable creating and viewing multiple dashboards
* 2727891: "Edit File" Screen has typo for Cancel button
* 2727888: Need Visual Indicator
* 2727836: Missing decimal points for Y-axis
* 2270189: Help in top right corner
* 2155299: Ability to create multiple dashboards and access from menu
* 2120991: Disable "Customize" tab for non-OLAP reports
* 2120963: Enable OpenI logo customization

Bugs Fixed in 2.0-Alpha:

* 1730531 - new chart is generated for every request
* 1660871 - PDF exports after login timeout, but pdf is invalid
* 1658608 - Project-Root path does not work on mangled deploy folder
* 1446879 - manage files - create new folder

Missing/Replaced features :

* R Integration -> incomplete
* Configurable menu -> New UI does not need it at all
* User defined roles and configurable security -> Now implemented J2EE role based security

Please pass the word around. And as always, we look forward to hearing from you.

cheers,

Sandeep

Sandeep Giri
Project Lead, OpenI.Org

OpenI 2.0 Alpha is Here

Sandeep Giri — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 16:11:25 -0000

Hi Everyone

I am very happy to announce that we have the alpha version of OpenI 2.0 available for download. I want to thank our entire development team for all the hard work they have put in for this release.

There is also a demo available at http://demo.openi.org/openi (login is openi2/openi2)

We look forward to hearing your feedback on improving this release as we work on further testing of this version to get to beta. Here're some more details on the release:

Files (available at: https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=142873&package_id=287874&release_id=619930/&abmode=1 ):

* openi-2.0-alpha.tomcat.zip contains binary build specific to Tomcat 6.0x
* openi-2.0-alpha.jboss.zip contains binary build specific to Jboss 4.2.2 (and can be used for other j2ee servers as well)
* openi-2.0-alpha.src.zip contains full source code to make your own custom builds

New features and enhancements :

SF.Net Bug Fixes:

Missing/Replaced features :

* R Integration -> incomplete
* Configurable menu -> New UI does not need it at all
* User defined roles and configurable security -> Now implemented J2EE role based security

Please pass the word around. And as always, we look forward to hearing from you.

cheers,

Sandeep

Sandeep Giri
Project Lead, OpenI.Org

OpenI 1.3.0 Released!

Sandeep Giri — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 07:22:00 -0000

Dear OpenI Community:

We are very happy to announce the long-awaited OpenI 1.3.0 release. The team was sort of on a hiatus over the winter, but now back on track to move the project forward.

Special thanks to Paul Lucas and Dipendra Pokhrel for contributing the majority of the code, and of course, to Pedro Casals for continued support on the internationalization front as well as making fixes on jPivot and Mondrian side.

With this release, we are moving further into the direction of being an application that supports analytical functions "out of the box". Our vision remains to be an app that one can install easily, point to existing data sources, whether OLAP, RDBMS, or data mining tools, and start visualizing the data right away.

Some key additions in this release are:

* Filter Multiple Selections -- select multiple member values under filter dimensions (previously one could only select one member value per filter dimension)
* Live EDA -- point to an existing OLAP cube and auto-generate individual analyses for each dimension; allowing easy "eye-balling" information in a cube
* Queued Drillthrough -- this bypasses OLAP-based drillthrough to execute custom SQL code to pull drillthrough details, enabling custom list-cut type features
* Feed Services -- our foray into data profiling part of ETL, this allows quick profiling of text file data to validate format and structure
* Enhanced Security
* i18n and user profile -- thanks again to Pedro for this, which enables implementing OpenI in any language, where language is defined as a part of user profile

For a complete list of features, bug fixes, and known issues, please visit: http://wiki.openi.org/index.php/Releases#OpenI_1.3.0

So -- go ahead, download, play around -- we always love to hear from you. And if you are adventurous, maybe you want to become a contributor. We welcome participation at all levels. After all, that is what open source is all about.

Cheers,

Sandeep
Project Lead, openi.org

OpenI 1.2.1 released

Sandeep Giri — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 18:43:27 -0000

The OpenI team is pleased to announce the 1.2.1 release. This release includes a greatly stabilized platform for OLAP and RDBMS reporting. Thanks to all those who provided feedback, in particular chris_lavigne and weavelink. Here are some of the highlights:
* Resolved several sql2005 compatibility issues. Greatly improved compatibility with sql2005, as well as backwards compatbility with sql2000, and mondrian.
* Read Only Access - We added a new user access level, which allows read only access to analyses, no admin directory visible.
* Greatly Improved jasper functionality: export features (pdf, xml, etc), subreports enabled, parameterizable reports enabled, larger resultset handling.

Full List of Bug Fixes
1473128 RDBMS - buffer overflow problems
1473691 sql2005 compat problems - adventure works
1473732 header problems in IE/ff
1473748 read only toolbar
1475313 Clicking SQL toolbar button doesn't show SQL Editor
1477949 download project exception on windows
1480672 Configure dashboards in IE
1480675 Manage files, when a file has no extension
1481276 mysql create foodmart script on 5.0, win
1491318 jasper - hide sub reports
1491319 jasper browser back button and params
1493894 dash board - sort order
1493896 dashboard - missing analysis throws exception
1495147 jasper - allow subreports
1495252 jasper (menu) hide subreport - sub.jrxml
1497793 dashboard - autogenerated
1504851 avoid ie flicker
1508930 sql2005 autogenerate - multiple hierarchy problems

Known Issues
* Problem with header on firefox 1.0x
* While dashboard sort order is not configurable from the UI, the order is controlled by the project.xml configuration. so if you change the order there, it will be reflected when you view that particular dashboard.

OpenI 1.2 released: SQL2005, R, autogeneration and more

Sandeep Giri — Fri, 14 Apr 2006 09:06:17 -0000

= Release notes for the OpenI 1.2 =
OpenI 1.2 has reached the Release milestone, and is now available for download. This release of OpenI greatly improves your business intelligence options. OpenI now integrates with:
* Sql Analysis Services 2005, Sql2000sp4, (continued sql2000sp3 support)
* R Server integration through RServe api
* Jasper RDBMS reporting.
* Dashboard Views - analyze your olap data side by side, for any number of analyses with the new dashboard feature
* Dashboard management - creating, modifying, and deleting dashboard definitions are simple, and can be done online
* Autogenerate - get an instant overview of your cubes by autogenerating reports for each dimension, then view them side by side with an autogenerated dashboard
* continued integration with Mondrian.

= New Features =
* [[Sql_2005_Integration]]
* Sql2000 sp4 compatibility
* [[Folder_Management_UI]]
* [[Enhanced_Chart_Support]] - time series
* [[Configurable_Admin_Menu]]
* [[RDBMS_Reporting]]
* [[Dashboard]]
* [[R_Integration]]
* [[Project_Download_Zip]] - Application admins can download the project contents as a zip file.
* [[Autogenerator]]

OpenI 1.2 Alpha - Sql2005 Integration

Sandeep Giri — Wed, 08 Mar 2006 01:53:55 -0000

OpenI 1.2 - ALPHA Release Notes
This release of OpenI greatly improves your business intelligence options. OpenI now integrates with:

* Sql Analysis Services 2005, Sql2000sp4, (continued sql2000sp3 support)
* R Server integration through RServe api
* Jasper RDBMS reporting.
* continued integration with Mondrian.
* Additional features listed below.
* This is an alpha release ("preview"). We are near beta, primiarily need to verify sql2005 functionality on other tomcat and jdk platforms. Also need to beef up documentation and samples.
* currently only tested on jdk1.4.x, and tomcat 5.0.x
* There are special deployment instructions for tomcat 5.0.x (other versions of tomcat, unknown if this is needed)
** Due to some issues integrating with sql2005, you will need unzip the following files (from jwsdp-1.6):
** unzip openi/conf/tomcat/common_endorsed.zip
** backup up your tomcat_home/common/endorsed/ directory
** copy xalan.jar, xercesImpl.jar, xml-apis.jar into tomcat_home/common/endorsed/
** continue with normal deployment instructions

Features
* Sql_2005_Integration
* Sql2000 sp4 compatibility
* Folder_Management_UI
* Enhanced_Chart_Support - time series
* Configurable_Admin_Menu
* RDBMS_Reporting
* Dashboard
* Read_Only_Access - add a new user access level, which allows read only access to analyses, no admin directory visible.
* R_Integration
* Project_Download_Zip - Application admins can download the project contents as a zip file.

Additional information available at http://wiki.openi.org