Archive for the 'Uncategorized' Category

Pentaho’s move to GitHub

Last week,  Nick Baker lead the effort to transition the Pentaho Platform and many of our open source commons and plugin projects over to GitHub.  Check out his forum post about the transition here:

http://forums.pentaho.com/showthread.php?135048-BA-Server-source-code-migration-to-GitHub

While SVN was a great tool to work with, GitHub offers a number of capabilities that we consider important to us as an open source engineering organization.

Over the next few months, we’ll be transitioning the remaining open source projects Pentaho hosts over to GitHub, next up is Pentaho Reporting!

So go ahead and fork, have fun!

Pentaho Marketplace is Here!

I’m proud to announce that included in our release of Pentaho BA Server 4.8 and Pentaho Data Integration 4.4 to SourceForge today, we’ve bundled as a plugin our first version of the Pentaho Marketplace!  With the Marketplace, it is now easy to download and install cool plugins developed by the community.

To get started with the BA Server Marketplace, log in as an administrator, and click the Marketplace toolbar icon or select Tools -> Marketplace.  In Spoon, click the Help -> Marketplace.  Find the plugin you want to install or upgrade, and click!

I would like to say thank you to all the hard work done by the many folks who participated in making this project reach 1.0!  The Pedros @ WebDetails have worked around the clock to deliver the BA Server Marketplace, their team has done a great job with the UI experience as well as a telemetry capability so the community can see what plugins are popular and how the marketplace is used (More on that in a future blog!).   Also, Wes Brown, Pentaho’s head of pixel management, provided a lot of great feedback and ideas for the UI, helping make the user experience fantastic!  On the PDI side, Matt Casters did a great job putting together a first version of the Marketplace within Spoon, followed by assistance from Sean Flatley and Matt Burgess, two of our core Kettle developers at Pentaho.  I hear Matt B. is also brewing up a number of new plugins, go check out more about them on his blog :-).

It’s great to see so many helping hands on a project like this, all done out of passion for the product, and the goal of opening up the product to even more capabilities and contributions!!

If you do find any issues with the Marketplace, please let us know.  We already have many plans for future versions, so keep an eye out … in the Marketplace … for Marketplace updates :-).

Finally, are you a plugin developer and would like to see your plugin appear in the Marketplace?  Go check out https://github.com/pentaho/marketplace-metadata for more details.  We want to get as many plugins listed as possible!

Recent Pentaho Tech Tips

Hi Folks,

I wanted to share a couple of the technical articles I’ve written in the last month:

Mondrian Cache Priming and Cache Control in the BI Server - This article covers how to take control of your Mondrian cache via action sequences, including priming the cache with MDX Queries as well as using Mondrian’s CacheControl API to flush specific segments of the cache.

Customizing your Pentaho Metadata Query in Pentaho Reporting - This article describes how to customize Pentaho’s Metadata Query Language (MQL) in a significant way before execution, allowing reports to respond to user input through prompting in ways that weren’t possible before.

Enjoy!

Will

Lego Skill Crane: The Claw

Over the weekend I completed my latest project, a Lego skill crane, including a video and instructions on how to build it yourself. The idea spawned from my 4 year old’s interest in Toy Story. The project has been featured on many blogs, including Ubergizmo, Make: Blog, Hack A Day, Neatorama, The NXT STEP, and Fascinating Lego Model of the Day.

A Busy Week with Matt

This week, Matt Casters spent the week here in Orlando, working with engineering and product management on our next big project.  I’m very excited about the work he’s been doing with Kettle 4.0.  Also this week, the engineering team is working towards delivering BI Platform 3.5 RC2.  I’ve found myself working in a lot of different projects, primarily Mondrian and Pentaho Metadata.

Also this week, we released 3.5 RC1 of Pentaho Reporting and BI Platform.  If you haven’t already, I recommend downloading Pentaho Report Designer and BI Server 3.5 RC1 and giving it a whirl.  It includes a lot of goodness, including Mondrian 3.1.1, Kettle 3.2.1, and of course Pentaho Reporting 3.5 RC1, which includes major enhancements including side-by-side sub-reports.  Your feedback will help us release a very solid stable version.  Thanks!

Google’s Caffeinated Cloud

Google just announced Java support for their App Engine, the first 10,000 developers can register now for the alpha release.  App Engine has been live for a year, and already has 150,000+ registered developers working in Python.  I wonder how many more developers will flock over to write caffeinated cloud code.  Once I get in, I hope to see what will be necessary to get the suite of Pentaho software running.  Stay tuned…

Pentaho Reporting for Java Developers

Over the past few months, I’ve been working in my spare time on Pentaho Reporting for Java Developers.  Working on the book has been a lot of fun, I’ve learned a  great deal about Pentaho Reporting in the process, and I’ve enjoyed working with Thomas and the Report Designer sprint team here in Orlando.  Right now I’m wrapping up the final chapter, and will be doing a lot of work updating earlier chapters based on the great work that the team has done with the Report Designer.

Over on Packt’s website, there is a much more detailed description of the book.  Check it out, and order your copy today!

A New Year, A New Blog

To celebrate my one year anniversary with Pentaho, I figured I would finally do something with my personal website and kick off this blog. Every day I work deep within Pentaho’s open source software, adding features and fixing bugs. So far this January, my time has been balanced between doing rearchitecture work within Pentaho’s Metadata project, specifically the MQL component, Mondrian bug fixing, and finally implementing some of the Query capabilities within olap4j. I plan on using this medium to share some interesting pieces of code, and help others dive into the plethora of Pentaho open source projects actively being developed.