Re: [Firebird-odbc-devel] OLAP-Navigator (was: odbc driver question)

[Nikolay S. <nik...@re...>]

Thomas,

Let's move this topic to olap-navigator-general. It is probably 
off-topic in firebird-odbc-devel.

Please see my comments below.

Thomas Steinmaurer wrote:
> Nikolay,
>
>   
>> Jorge was not exactly precise. :-)
>>
>> There is no specific long-term ODBC development budget at Red Soft.
>>
>> 1) So on one side, ODBC driver development is currently driven by client 
>> requests. This is when I can become heavily involved.
>> About half of ODBC bug fixes in builds since 145 are done because 
>> BroadView Software asked them done.
>>
>> So in my Open Source life right now I spend more time with the project 
>> which adds OLAP extensions and GUI to Firebird databases:
>> http://olap-navigator.sourceforge.net/
>>     
>
>  From previous email conversation you might know that I'm building a 
> data warehousing system with Mondrian and Firebird. The lack of a 
> capable and modern looking OLAP client for Mondrian is IMHO one major 
> drawback when comparing an Open Source OLAP solution with e.g. the 
> Microsoft world (Analysis Services, ...).
>
> I've tried the JPivot based solution included in Mondrian. Well, a first 
> start and possibly a solution for prototypical implementations for 
> ad-hoc queries, but compared to commercial products it looks plain oldish.
>
> I've also tried the freely available JPalo 2.0 OLAP client which can 
> interact with a XML/A server. It looks much more modern and a first try 
> was encouraging with less data volume, but it went out to be VERY slow 
> when working with larger data volumes. The web-based JPivot application 
> was much more responsive in that case.
>   
In olap-navigator we spent a great deal of effort to implement 
server-side grid rendering and page-by-page navigation.
So its rendering performance should be ok.
> So I have downloaded your OLAP navigator. I've deployed the .war file on 
> my Apache Tomcat web server, but where to start now to get connected to 
> my Mondrian cube?
>   
I tried to explain the procedure on project wiki, but this is probably 
not enough.
Please get in touch with me via some Instant messanging, e.g. 
nikolay.samofatov Skype name or 114101470 ICQ and I will walk you 
through the set-up process.
> Do you know any other OLAP client with support for Mondrian? It does not 
> need to be a web-based application. The Pentaho Spreadsheet Services 
> might be a solution for an integration into Excel, but AFAIK it's rather 
> expensive due to the mandatory Pentaho subscription. Another one I came 
> across is IntraSight (http://www.activeinterface.com/intrasight.html). 
> Ever tried that?
>   
No, I didn't try it. The landscape in Open Source BI changes rather 
quickly. New tools appear and get abandoned in a matter of months. I'm 
not used to that from my Firebird experience :-)

For ad-hoc OLAP browsing we use updated and heavily modified JRubik. 
Since the main repository of JRubik appears abandoned, I may put it into 
olap-navigator CVS if you are interested.

Olap Navigator is not really an ad-hoc slicer dicer, although it would 
be easy to create one based on it,
Instead Olap Navigator aims to be Data Warehouse GUI builder. The end 
product (defined in Olap Naviator resources) is geared not to 
sophisticated analysts, but to regular users.

We also use pretty sophisticated ETL toolset for Firebird - Red Replicator.
It is probably mis-named because replication logging is only a little 
part of its functionality. In data warehousing environment we use it to 
maintain materialized views across database links (via Firebird API, 
Oracle flashback/versions query, ODBC, or even FTP). I probably can open 
its source as well - this needs to be discussed with Sean Leyne of 
BroadView and Red Soft management, but I see no major obstacles for that 
either.

> Thanks.
>   
-- 
Nikolay Samofatov, MBA
Red Soft International
+1 416 710 6854