tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-222514862024-03-14T08:41:14.608+01:00kJubeOpen ConnectedUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger89125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22251486.post-25058697885707545652018-12-16T01:48:00.001+01:002018-12-16T01:48:30.944+01:00kettle Neo4j modeler<div style="text-align: justify;">
7 years ago, at Pentaho, Matt Casters launched the initiative of having a <a href="http://www.ibridge.be/?p=206">Star Modeler inside Pentaho Data Integration</a> (kettle). The idea behind the Modeler was to be able to manage your data model from within the data integration tool and to link your data integration code directly to the data model definition. This post is not about the Star Modeler but for those interested, <a href="http://diethardsteiner.blogspot.com/2011/11/star-schema-modeling-with-pentaho-data.html">Diethard Steiner did a good writeup of how the modeler worked</a>, so those interested, can read up on some Pentaho history there.</div>
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The reason I bring up some Pentaho & kettle history because Star Modeler initiative never took off. Matt put this experiment out in the open, but the idea never made it past a first release. The functionality never got included into the product, unfortunately. There where several reasons for this:</div>
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<li style="text-align: justify;">The first (and least interesting) reason was political in nature. The team architecting the front-end part of Pentaho's technology claimed modeling belonged to the reporting side of the product. The front-end team ended up owning that task and nothing useful ever saw the light. </li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">The second reason why a proper modeler was never put on the kettle roadmap, was because in 2011, kettle was increasingly being used in big data context and kettle was being used to integrate with Mongo, Hadoop, Cassandra, CouchDB and so on. The whole idea of a Star Modeler just didn't match up with the schema-less future the big data revolution had in mind for us.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">The last reason I can see, why the Modeler didn't take off, is because in essence, when writing to an RDBMS or columnar SQL database, once a schema is created in the database, a series of tables exists to which you can (read: have to map) map your data integration at all times. In essence, schema creation is a one time job, and once created you need to comply with what is there. That reduces the need for a Start Modeler.</li>
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7 years later, the world of data analytics and our insights have evolved. The big data revolution has indeed kicked in. Data volumes are exploding all around us and the need for flexibility in the data model, beyond what traditional RDBM's can offer is recognized everywhere. At the same time however, in the world of schema-free databases the challenge of data integration has become more significant. </div>
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I guess, what I'm trying to say, is that, the reasons that might have made the Star Modeler fail, might not exist anymore. And guess what, it happens to be so, that Matt released a new Modeler for kettle. This time to manage graph models in Neo4j and load data into Neo4j at the same time.</div>
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As you can see from below screenshots, the Graph Modeler ressembles his older brother somewhat ;-)</div>
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I strongly believe, that in the schema free Neo4j world, the ability to manage your graph model from within the tool you use to also load your graph gives you the level of control you need to ensure that whatever data you want to map into your graph is at all times correctly mapped to the model that should covern your graph, even with limited or no constraints in place to ensure model integrity.</div>
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In my next blog post, I will spend some time explaining how to use this Neo4j kettle step.</div>
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22251486.post-41821249593847118672018-12-15T23:37:00.002+01:002018-12-15T23:39:40.659+01:00PCM18<div style="text-align: justify;">
A couple of weeks back, I had the pleasure and honour to visit the <a href="https://it-novum.com/blog/pentaho-community-meeting-2018/" target="_blank">Pentaho Community Meeting</a> in Bologna with over 250 participants from 25 countries. Notwithstanding (or maybe because) I recently, gave up my job as Professional Services Director for EMEA/APAC at Pentaho for a (very similar) role at <a href="http://www.neo4j.com/" target="_blank">Neo4j</a>, I attended. And as every year, it was great fun, and good to catch up with so many friends, colleagues and business partners.<br />
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The weekend in Bologna made me remember many great moments with the wider Pentaho community like: <a href="http://www.ibridge.be/?p=5" target="_blank">having the pleasure of reviewing beta version of kettle</a> (even some pre-Pentaho versions), <a href="https://kjube.blogspot.com/2010/09/pentaho-community-gathering-live.html" target="_blank">starting the first live Pentaho community event blog at PCG10</a>, <a href="https://kjube.blogspot.com/2011/09/" target="_blank">organising the Pentaho Community Meeting 2011 in Italy</a> and attending many more events in the years after, <a href="https://code.google.com/archive/p/kettle-franchise/" target="_blank">launching the KFF project</a>, my first months at Pentaho in 2011, <a href="https://www.bnova.it/landing-evento-pentaho-2017/" target="_blank">speaking at various Pentaho events</a>, numerous trips across Europe, the US and Asia, and during all that, building for Pentaho a services business of 14mio$ in EMEA, keeping over 50 people busy.<br />
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All of this has been an amazing ride, but clearly it was only fun because of all the great people that took that ride with me. I want to thank everybody that I came across in the last 12 years of working with Pentaho tech. I would not have been successful without the collaboration and support of so many people. I consider myself lucky to have had the chance to work with so many bright, creative, energetic and fun people.<br />
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Luckily, and as I already expressed at PCM18 to many (and during my talk), I am sure that our ways will not part. I firmly believe that in Neo4j projects, there will be a need for data integration specialist. So see you all at PCM19.</div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22251486.post-1590133147152210652017-01-30T03:00:00.000+01:002018-12-15T22:32:48.805+01:00Pentaho blog collection<div>
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Today, I just wanted to share my collection of Pentaho bloggers. So far this collection has been living in my browser's bookmark collection. I wanted to get it out there and ensure all these excellent blogs on Pentaho get read, re-read, and re-read again. </div>
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<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-fombella-pombal-3757b925" target="_blank">David Fombella</a> @ <a href="http://anonymousbi.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">anonymousbi.wordpress.com</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicholasandrewgoodman" target="_blank">Nick Goodman</a> @ <a href="http://www.nicholasgoodman.com/" target="_blank">www.nicholasgoodman.com</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattcasters" target="_blank">Matt Casters</a> @ <a href="http://www.ibridge.be/" target="_blank">www.ibridge.be</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/gretchenmoran" target="_blank">Gretchen Moran</a> @ <a href="http://gretchenmoran.blogspot.it/" target="_blank">gretchenmoran.blogspot.it</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/julianhyde" target="_blank">Julian Hyde</a> @ <a href="http://julianhyde.blogspot.com/">julianhyde.blogspot.com</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/slawomir-chodnicki-96986812" target="_blank">Slawo Chodnicki</a> @ <a href="http://type-exit.org/adventures-with-open-source-bi" target="_blank">type-exit.org/adventures-with-open-source-bi</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomasmorgner" target="_blank">Thomas Morgner</a> @ <a href="http://www.on-reporting.com/" target="_blank">www.on-reporting.com</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/wpgorman" target="_blank">Will Gorman</a> @ <a href="http://www.willgorman.com/" target="_blank">www.willgorman.com</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-dixon-61b3431" target="_blank">James Dixon</a> @ <a href="http://jamesdixon.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">jamesdixon.wordpress.com</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/pealves" target="_blank">Pedro Alves</a> @ <a href="http://pedroalves-bi.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">pedroalves-bi.blogspot.com</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/doug-moran-3129763" target="_blank">Doug Moran</a> @ <a href="http://dougmoran.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">dougmoran.blogspot.com</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/latinojoel" target="_blank">Joel Latino</a> @ <a href="http://joel-latino.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">joel-latino.blogspot.com</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/tombarber" target="_blank">Tom Barber</a> @ <a href="http://pentahomusings.blogspot.com/">pentahomusings.blogspot.com</a> & <a href="http://www.meteorite.bi/" target="_blank">www.meteorite.bi</a></li>
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<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulstoellberger" target="_blank">Paul Stoellberger</a> @ <a href="http://www.meteorite.bi/" target="_blank">www.meteorite.bi</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/sadakarpochampalli" target="_blank">Sadakar Pochampalli</a> @ <a href="http://pentaho-bi-suite.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">pentaho-bi-suite.blogspot.com</a></li>
<li>Dima Prokopenko @ <a href="http://pdiby.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">pdiby.blogspot.com</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jens-bleuel-065b597" target="_blank">Jens Bleuel</a> @ <a href="http://kettle.bleuel.com/" target="_blank">kettle.bleuel.com</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jagdeesh-77362314" target="_blank">Jagdeesh SS</a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/nanuganga" target="_blank">Gangadhara Boranna</a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/suresh-narayanappa-45746b16" target="_blank">Suresh Narayanappa</a> @ <a href="http://pentaho.graymatter.co.in/blogs">pentaho.graymatter.co.in/blogs</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/dave-reinke-1702071" target="_blank">Dave Reinke</a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-deptula-88572616" target="_blank">Chris Deptula</a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinrhaas" target="_blank">Kevin Haas</a>, @ <a href="http://inquidia.com/news-and-info/blogs" target="_blank">inquidia.com/news-and-info/blogs</a> </li>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/rpbouman" target="_blank">Roland Bouman</a> @ <a href="http://rpbouman.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">rpbouman.blogspot.com</a></li>
<li>Rahul Anand @ <a href="http://geekswithblogs.net/rahul" target="_blank">geekswithblogs.net/rahul</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewpburgess" target="_blank">Matt Burgess</a> @ <a href="http://funpdi.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">funpdi.blogspot.com</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/diethardsteiner" target="_blank">Diethard Steiner</a> @ <a href="http://diethardsteiner.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">diethardsteiner.blogspot.com</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/sylvain-decloix-33873b14" target="_blank">Sylvain Decloix</a> @ <a href="http://www.osbi.fr/" target="_blank">www.osbi.fr</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/sramazzina" target="_blank">Sergio Ramazzina</a> @ <a href="http://ramathoughts.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">ramathoughts.blogspot.com</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjamindietz" target="_blank">Benjamin Dietz</a> @ <a href="http://www.dietz-solutions.com/" target="_blank">www.dietz-solutions.com</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaeltarallo" target="_blank">Michael Tarallo</a> @ <a href="http://michaeltarallo.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">michaeltarallo.blogspot.com</a> </li>
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<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/bart-maertens-96425675" target="_blank">Bart Maertens</a> @ <a href="http://b-e-o.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">b-e-o.blogspot.com</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-keeley-1773032" target="_blank">Dan Keeley</a> @ <a href="http://dankeeley.wordpress.com/">dankeeley.wordpress.com</a></li>
<li>Edureka @ <a href="http://www.edureka.co/blog/category/business-intelligence">edureka.co/blog</a> and <a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=J8NbYQaQiPo" target="_blank">youtube.com/watch?v=J8NbYQaQiPo</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianrobinson" target="_blank">Brian Robinson</a> @ <a href="http://robinsontechnology.com/blog" target="_blank">robinsontechnology.com/blog</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jortilles" target="_blank">Juanjo Ortilles</a> @ <a href="http://pentahohispano.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">pentahohispano.blogspot.com</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/fcorti" target="_blank">Francesco Corti</a> @ <a href="http://fcorti.com/">fcorti.com</a> and <a href="http://francescocorti.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">francescocorti.wordpress.com</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/amusarra" target="_blank">Antonio Musarra</a> @ <a href="http://dontesta.it/blog/en/category/pentaho-solutions" target="_blank">dontesta.it/blog/en/category/pentaho-solutions</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/mahall" target="_blank">Mark Hall</a> @ <a href="http://markahall.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">markahall.blogspot.com</a></li>
<li>Todo @ <a href="http://todobi.blogspot.com/">todobi.blogspot.com</a></li>
<li>Nilesh Patil @ <a href="http://pentahointegra.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">pentahointegra.blogspot.com</a></li>
<li>Various @ <a href="http://helicaltech.com/blog-detail" target="_blank">helicaltech.com/blog-detail</a></li>
<li>Marcio Junior Vieira @ <a href="http://blogs.ambientelivre.com.br/marcio/category/pentaho" target="_blank">blogs.ambientelivre.com.br/marcio/category/pentaho</a></li>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RBCT1g_bQkA/WGWKy_wPjoI/AAAAAAAAGM0/azr6WEFcY9oeykeBlRCYQAIoV6j0nGSHACLcB/s1600/pentaho-hgc-logo.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="50" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RBCT1g_bQkA/WGWKy_wPjoI/AAAAAAAAGM0/azr6WEFcY9oeykeBlRCYQAIoV6j0nGSHACLcB/s200/pentaho-hgc-logo.png" width="200" /></a></div>
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<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/nelsonsousa" target="_blank">Nelson Sousa</a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/miguel-cunhal-41a59668" target="_blank">Miguel Cunhal</a> @ <a href="http://ubiquis.co.uk/blog" target="_blank">ubiquis.co.uk/blog</a></li>
<li>Julien Bichon @ <a href="http://pentaho-tutorial.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">pentaho-tutorial.blogspot.com</a></li>
<li>Dan Moore @ <a href="http://mooreds.com/wordpress/archives/category/pentaho-data-integration" target="_blank">mooreds.com/wordpress/archives/category/pentaho-data-integration</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/psuminda" target="_blank">Prabhath Pathirana</a> @ <a href="http://psuminda.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">psuminda.blogspot.com</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/caiomsouza" target="_blank">Caio Moreno de Souza</a> @ <a href="http://blog.professorcoruja.com/">blog.professorcoruja.com</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/hiromu-hota-44546166" target="_blank">Hiromu Hota</a> @ <a href="http://github.com/HiromuHota" target="_blank">github.com/HiromuHota</a> </li>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/pasrijatarun" target="_blank">Tarunn R Pasrija</a> @ <a href="https://youtu.be/kOvs_X92sWc?list=PL_kB-fm94LxKDnkAtdZhqpORBnsrlybSu" target="_blank">Youtube</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexanderschurman" target="_blank">Alexander Schurman</a> @ <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCL9zCeW3BvhiNtH0ffpNg3PtHRmXmY0G" target="_blank">YouTube</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/harris-ward-86b192a" target="_blank">Harris Ward</a> @ <a href="http://ivy-is.co.uk/blog">ivy-is.co.uk/blog</a></li>
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If I forgot any one, drop me an email. Privacy does not exist anymore these days, so I'm sure you'll find a way to contact me. I'll gladly add any missing links. If I missed anybody, please do not feel offended. And with that, before I go, here's the soundtrack for your blog reading. Enjoy!</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22251486.post-67790428029281055432017-01-12T17:00:00.000+01:002017-01-12T17:00:24.013+01:00Pentaho Colouring Book<br />
While sifting through some old blog posts, I ran into this Pentaho 3.0 colouring book. Hilarious. And for any one who has every visited our Orlando offices or has been around since the early days, so very recognizable still. Maybe some things should remain in the past, but I really cannot help and need to share.<br />
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-81g7hfYy-l4/WGY7cs5N9DI/AAAAAAAAGN4/CWrRhxScGuY6uqmXp5g4XExDIT-l34oDwCLcB/s1600/ColouringBook.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-81g7hfYy-l4/WGY7cs5N9DI/AAAAAAAAGN4/CWrRhxScGuY6uqmXp5g4XExDIT-l34oDwCLcB/s320/ColouringBook.PNG" width="500" /></a></div>
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Original blog post available <a href="http://dougmoran.blogspot.it/2009/04/new-pentaho-install-and-evaluation.html" target="_blank">here</a> on <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/doug-moran-3129763" target="_blank">Doug Moran</a>'s blog. Or just download the full <a href="https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10758142/kjube/Pentaho%20Nostalgia/Colouring%20Book/pentaho_coloring_book_ce.pdf" target="_blank">e-book here</a>.<br />
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Enjoy !<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22251486.post-73441000012919579702017-01-01T01:05:00.000+01:002017-01-01T01:05:01.854+01:00Happy New Year<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22251486.post-15619582916920177372016-12-30T15:00:00.000+01:002018-12-15T22:51:24.110+01:00Pentaho World 2015 - Model Driven Data Integration presentation<div style="text-align: justify;">
During <a href="http://www.pentahoworld.com/" target="_blank">Pentaho World</a>, Matt Casters and I promised to publish the slide deck and demo materials we showed during our breakout session. For those who missed Pentaho World, the original agenda is on the <a href="http://www.pentahoworld.com/agenda.aspx" target="_blank">Pentaho World website</a>. For those who were present in Orlando, you can access all of the presentations and this year and even video recordings of the talks. </div>
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Anyhow, Matt and I promised to publish the materials, and a promise being a promise, here is a transcript of the presentation AND the zip file with Matt's demo. <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/hp/update/6220177407282810880" target="_blank">Sorry if it took over a year to get this out</a> but the end of the year is a good moment to remember old promises.<br />
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<h4 style="text-align: justify;">
The intro</h4>
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Matt and I started working on metadata driven ETL somewhere back in 2008 when doing a migration project, moving a current Pentaho Customer from their existing ETL tool to Pentaho Data Integration. </div>
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During that project we noticed that various ETL patterns were repeated throughout the whole implementation. Particularly the "staging" logic to pull data from the sources and land it into the data warehouse showed a repetition rate of about 120 times the same pattern. When we discovered this potential for re-use of the same logic, Matt helped me write a transformation that wrote 120 transformations based on the list of tables that needed to be staged. That was one of those rare real "<a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Aha-Erlebnis" target="_blank">aha erlebnis</a>" moments. We learned that ETL transformations didn't have to written by a a developer, but could be written by a machine. In casu Matt exposed an API for PDI to write PDI transformations.<br />
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The whole project finally led to the creation of the <a href="http://kjube.blogspot.it/2010/09/pcg10-kff-presentation.html" target="_blank">KFF project</a>, a framework for managing PDI projects, but that is another story, (and one that has become largely obsolete due to the evolution of PDI as a product).<br />
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Metadata driven ETL through the <a href="https://help.pentaho.com/Documentation/6.1/0L0/0Y0/0K0/ETL_Metadata_Injection" target="_blank">metadata injection step</a>, made it into the product in 2010, as you can see here in the original demo by Matt. And has since been documented intensively by various community members as <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/DavidFombellaPombal/etl-metadata-injection-with-pentaho-data-integration" target="_blank">David Fombella</a>, <a href="http://www.ibridge.be/?p=194" target="_blank">Matt</a>, <a href="https://dankeeley.wordpress.com/2015/01/08/non-native-metadata-injection/" target="_blank">Dan Keeley</a>, and many others.<br />
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But back to model driven ETL and the Pentaho World 2015 preso.<br />
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<h4>
What it is</h4>
We believe that exposing PDI's transformation engine to allow it to be controlled by a stream of metadata is key to delivering data integration capabilities at scale. And when we talk about scale, we are not talking about data volumes but the sheer amount of data integration coding that the foresee-able data explosion will require.<br />
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Metadata driven data integration doesn't just offer scalability from a development point of view. It also offers more maintainable solutions through better standardisation and massive adaptability capabilities. Having machines writing your code on the fly ensures the code remains in a perfect shape and does not degrade over time under de hands of a series of different developers, with different backgrounds, different coding principles and different naming standards.<br />
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We see various use cases in the market where model driven data integration can be of value. Here are some examples:<br />
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<ul>
<li>DI tool migration: Migrating away from your existing ETL tool to a cheaper and more modern alternative isn't an easy endeavour. Years of investment in any tool will cause an effective technology lock-in. However, as mentioned above, if your ETL logic follows specific patterns, and usually it does or can, the model driven ETL can cut down the re-engineering cost of your ETL to the point the business case becomes positive.</li>
<li>Data lake data ingestion: Landing data in a data lake is something many of our customers focus heavily on. It is the first hurdle to overcome to make the data available to data scientists who can crunch the data into useable information. The ability to ingest data across 100s of systems by scanning their metadata and the using it for data extract and ingestion into Hadoop speeds up the creation of a true enterprise data hub.</li>
<li>IoT: Internet of Things use cases are all about machines talking to each other. The value of the above described capabilities should be evident in this use case, which is underlined in the short demo described below.</li>
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The demo</h4>
The attached demo files show a simple use case of PDI receiving a json file with metadata information to read out a csv file and load it into a database. The demo consists of 4 folders.<br />
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<ul>
<li>Data: The data set for the demo</li>
<li>Step 1: The basic transformation, no metadata involved</li>
<li>Step 2: Same pattern, metadata driven</li>
<li>Step 3: Extended from just metadata driven data loading all the way up to publishnig</li>
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<h4>
The caveats</h4>
Before handing you the goodies to play around with, here are some caveats for you to consider.<br />
<ul>
<li>Continuous Integration: Due to it's complexity, model driven data integration needs arduous testing. The smallest change can create havoc at scale. Hence we suggest setting up a proper development environment with nightly builds of your solution and continuous testing.</li>
<li>Version management: Through the introduction of metadata not only code needs to be version managed, but also your metadata. And since the metadata can come from external sources proper validation before using it is needed.</li>
<li>80/20: While a model driven approach can be applied to a great many ETL patterns, there are still many situations where manual coding cannot be avoided. Model driven ETL is not a magical bullet. Do not try to solve every data integration challenge with this approach. </li>
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<h4>
The goodies</h4>
Attached are the <a href="https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10758142/kjube/(PW15)%20Model%20driven%20data%20ingest/demo.zip" target="_blank">zip file with the demo code</a> and the <a href="https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10758142/kjube/(PW15)%20Model%20driven%20data%20ingest/model-driven-data-integration-pw15.pdf" target="_blank">pdf file with slides presented</a> at Pentaho World as well as the embedded presentation below.<br />
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Since ...</h4>
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... we gave this talk, metadata driven data ingest and metadata driven ETL overall have become major topics at Pentaho and in the wider big data analytics industry. Many marketing posts, blogposts and and write up's have appeared. Here are a list of resources I know of.</div>
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<li><a href="http://www.pentaho.com/pentaho-introduces-metadata-injection-further-simplify-and-accelerate-big-data-analytics-pipeline" target="_blank">Marketing release Pentaho 6.1</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.pentaho.com/resources/metadata-injection-datasheet" target="_blank">Pentaho Datasheet</a></li>
<li><a href="http://kettle.bleuel.com/2016/04/13/pentaho-6-1-part-1/" target="_blank">Jens Bleuel on Pentaho 6.1</a></li>
<li><a href="http://kettle.bleuel.com/2016/04/14/pentaho-6-1-part-2/" target="_blank">Jens Bleuel on Metadata injection</a></li>
<li><a href="http://diethardsteiner.github.io/pdi/2015/10/31/Transformation-Executor-Record-Groups.html" target="_blank">Diethard Steiner on metadata driven ETL</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgoPYx21xYU" target="_blank">Shawn Monroe on YouTube</a></li>
<li><a href="http://pedroalves-bi.blogspot.it/2016/05/adding-metadata-injection-support-to.html" target="_blank">Pedro Alves on his Blog</a></li>
<li><a href="http://searchdatamanagement.techtarget.com/feature/Metadata-injection-marks-Pentaho-big-data-pipeline" target="_blank">Techtarget</a></li>
<li><a href="https://anotherpdi.blogspot.it/2016/10/pentaho-metadata-injection-native.html" target="_blank">Another PDI Blog</a></li>
<li><a href="http://datamelt.weebly.com/blog/ruleengine-dynamically-process-files-with-metadata-injection" target="_blank">Datamelt</a></li>
<li><a href="http://conferences.oreilly.com/strata/hadoop-big-data-ny/public/schedule/detail/54713" target="_blank">Penatho @ Strata + Hadoop Presentations</a></li>
<li><a href="https://skillsmatter.com/skillscasts/7313-metadata-injection-abstracting-pdi" target="_blank">SkillsMatter presentation by Pedro Alves at PLUG</a></li>
<li><a href="https://skillsmatter.com/skillscasts/7602-pdi-metadata-injection" target="_blank">SkillsMatter presentation by Nelson Sousa at PLUG</a></li>
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Likely there are many more materials out there. I'm glad the topic was so well received.</div>
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Enjoy!</div>
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22251486.post-88786440226114625472016-12-30T02:00:00.000+01:002018-12-15T22:43:17.891+01:00Nostalgia<br />
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At the end of the year, looking back, not just on 2016 but also further back, I collected a couple of images from the Pentaho past. Most of this comes from old blog posts I happen to revisit (yes, a lot of end of year nostalgia is happening here). And the internet has an excellent memory, so revisiting the past is easy.<br />
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As always, before you start reading, turn on the soundtrack please.<br />
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So here come the visuals. <b>For those with a visual memory, maybe you can figure out which blog/author the below images came from? </b>I have not given away the names. You need to follow a hyperlink to see the answer. But Pentaho Community Members should be able to score 5 out of 5 easily. </div>
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1) To start with, below are some screenshots from early kettle versions. Version 1.1 or so. Pre-Pentaho material. In 2007 not a lot of people were writing about kettle, but some were! And look at those icons. Since those we have gone through at least 2 other versions.</div>
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The above images are taken from <a href="http://www.nicholasgoodman.com/bt/blog/" target="_blank">the blog</a> of the <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicholasandrewgoodman" target="_blank">following gentleman</a> (you have to click to know the answer), early PDI contributor and experimenter in the field, as well as somebody who executed a lot of early day consulting engagements for Pentaho. Never heard of him, well, this was early days ... </div>
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2) In the next series, I've added some 1 non-Pentaho specific images from the author's blog, just because it was so charming, and to make it a little easier for you to recognize this amazing Pentaho Community Contributor.</div>
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<span style="text-align: justify;">The images come from </span><a href="http://rpbouman.blogspot.it/" style="text-align: justify;" target="_blank">the blog</a><span style="text-align: justify;"> of </span><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/rpbouman" style="text-align: justify;" target="_blank">this gentleman</a><span style="text-align: justify;">, very active contributor of a great deal of Pentaho projects, including the </span><a href="https://github.com/rpbouman/kettle-cookbook" style="text-align: justify;" target="_blank">Cookbook</a><span style="text-align: justify;">, </span><a href="http://code.google.com/p/krex/source/checkout" style="text-align: justify;" target="_blank">KREX</a><span style="text-align: justify;">, Pendular, the Pentaho Analysis Editor, the Pentaho database inspection service, and likely a bunch of other projects that I totally forgot.</span><br />
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3) But there is more. Next one should be easy. These images ...<br />
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... were taken from <a href="https://themagicaltrout.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">the blog</a> of <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/pealves" target="_blank">this gentleman</a>, no further introductions required.<br />
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4) And there is more. Try the following set, which is very PDI focussed. The images themselves should betray who posted this screenshots.<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wl9fBPKLPlk/WGVn014p2JI/AAAAAAAAGLs/MCVLWPlvH9Q2cAqS1zejO1YntlHm5xzEACLcB/s1600/partitioning_schema.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="377" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wl9fBPKLPlk/WGVn014p2JI/AAAAAAAAGLs/MCVLWPlvH9Q2cAqS1zejO1YntlHm5xzEACLcB/s400/partitioning_schema.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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that came from<a href="http://type-exit.org/adventures-with-open-source-bi/" target="_blank"> the blog</a> of <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/slawomir-chodnicki-96986812" target="_blank">this gentleman</a>.<br />
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5) Finally, one more to concluded the series, cause all good things come in 5. Some screenshots might look totally unknown to today's Pentaho user, but hey, the first are from a community project that has transformed into something else, and some others are Pentaho Server version 3. Do you believe what our admin console used to look like?<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fP2oewtqEP8/WGV_muRUcHI/AAAAAAAAGMU/ZzbbOC05aJcL7QhKoiYE0tXUteJnaPfFQCLcB/s1600/pat-ui.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="281" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fP2oewtqEP8/WGV_muRUcHI/AAAAAAAAGMU/ZzbbOC05aJcL7QhKoiYE0tXUteJnaPfFQCLcB/s400/pat-ui.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Msg6PiOqYbE/WGV_p8vF1lI/AAAAAAAAGMk/kJN9FXbmQqcWq4snhv9RaxbvbUPrOQ07gCLcB/s1600/snapshot5.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Msg6PiOqYbE/WGV_p8vF1lI/AAAAAAAAGMk/kJN9FXbmQqcWq4snhv9RaxbvbUPrOQ07gCLcB/s400/snapshot5.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-HFJDRK8WDLI/WGV_pZKZ-HI/AAAAAAAAGMg/o0830NThRw0U4v2ng5SsuqLxX8-PZwxTQCLcB/s1600/snapshot6.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-HFJDRK8WDLI/WGV_pZKZ-HI/AAAAAAAAGMg/o0830NThRw0U4v2ng5SsuqLxX8-PZwxTQCLcB/s400/snapshot6.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<br />
The above were from <a href="http://pentahomusings.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">the blog</a> of <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/tombarber" target="_blank">this gentleman</a>, a magical trout who ran the Pentaho IRC channel in early days and kicked of many a Community Project.<br />
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I could go on, ripping images from the internet and blogs, but I'm going to stop here. If you want to read about Pentaho, apart from the great online documentation that is available these days at <a href="http://help.pentaho.com/">help.pentaho.com</a>, there is an enormous amount of people blogging on Pentaho. Go and google'em.<br />
<br />
The above are all screenshots from blogposts of at least 5, if not 10 years back, things I went to revisit out of sheer nostalgia.<br />
<br />
Jumping forward, and to conclude this blog post, look at where are at now.<br />
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Let's see where we'll get in 2017!</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22251486.post-19371811079296763462016-12-29T12:29:00.001+01:002018-12-15T22:44:20.784+01:00Marketplace on 7I installed our latest software release, <a href="http://www.pentaho.com/product/version-7-0-update" target="_blank">Pentaho 7.0</a>, a couple of weeks back. Having been an active <a href="http://community.pentaho.com/" target="_blank">Pentaho Community</a> User, the first thing I wanted to do is install the <a href="http://www.pentaho.com/marketplace/" target="_blank">market place</a>, to test out all the cool existing gadgets, including the new toys that were touted at <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/pcm16" target="_blank">#PCM16</a> and the recently promoted <a href="http://www.pentaho.com/blog/pentaho-mqtt-iot" target="_blank">MQQTT</a> steps.<br />
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For some awkward reason, the Pentaho EE server, still does not come with the Pentaho Marketplace standard enabled. It is not in the standard menu!</div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QoLyjVrLkzo/WGJZwC4YSFI/AAAAAAAAGGk/21yDc7MJFl84HiU9agqG7Ui4Ck8ZtP-EwCLcB/s1600/Screenshot%2Bfrom%2B2016-12-27%2B13%253A07%253A57.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="256" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QoLyjVrLkzo/WGJZwC4YSFI/AAAAAAAAGGk/21yDc7MJFl84HiU9agqG7Ui4Ck8ZtP-EwCLcB/s400/Screenshot%2Bfrom%2B2016-12-27%2B13%253A07%253A57.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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While I was getting ready to go through the old manual download in order to put the plugin into the right folder, I dawned to me that the procedure to get marketplace onto your EE install had been made a lot easier. And indeed, when navigating to the Marketplace website, it wasn't hard to spot find the "Find Marketplace" instructions.</div>
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Fr24ywH_D1k/WGJa0cT1inI/AAAAAAAAGGs/XXffDFFaA6UFl2Ca4x0m6EuWDMOpgYd0QCLcB/s1600/Screenshot%2Bfrom%2B2016-12-27%2B13%253A09%253A51%2Bhighlight.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="303" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Fr24ywH_D1k/WGJa0cT1inI/AAAAAAAAGGs/XXffDFFaA6UFl2Ca4x0m6EuWDMOpgYd0QCLcB/s400/Screenshot%2Bfrom%2B2016-12-27%2B13%253A09%253A51%2Bhighlight.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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Once instructions found, I did notice that for some reason, Pentaho has still opted to hide enabling of the Marketplace in an obscure config file. Not the level of user friendliness I would have hoped, but better than pre-6.</div>
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-H58lClNf3LU/WGJbl0MnWFI/AAAAAAAAGG0/XtuGoCHRomQGTcdQlsUa-lhgjqBjKC34gCLcB/s1600/Screenshot%2Bfrom%2B2016-12-27%2B13%253A15%253A22.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="217" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-H58lClNf3LU/WGJbl0MnWFI/AAAAAAAAGG0/XtuGoCHRomQGTcdQlsUa-lhgjqBjKC34gCLcB/s400/Screenshot%2Bfrom%2B2016-12-27%2B13%253A15%253A22.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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A <i>quick</i> "./ctlscript.sh restart" later, the Marketplace was available on my box</div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HdzrQTYo0j4/WGJc8A3_g0I/AAAAAAAAGHA/xOIAyZtNlmU2MccgsXp-_WyoUDq2AgF_gCLcB/s1600/Screenshot%2Bfrom%2B2016-12-27%2B13%253A21%253A20.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="253" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HdzrQTYo0j4/WGJc8A3_g0I/AAAAAAAAGHA/xOIAyZtNlmU2MccgsXp-_WyoUDq2AgF_gCLcB/s400/Screenshot%2Bfrom%2B2016-12-27%2B13%253A21%253A20.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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Easy enough.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22251486.post-7243257354948606082016-12-28T18:18:00.002+01:002018-12-15T22:45:11.390+01:00Steel Wheels ?<div style="text-align: justify;">
All Business Analytics software platforms come with a sample data set and sample functionality. Usually this involves a fictitious company with fictitious products and fictitious users, a scenario, easy to understand for any end-user or IT-developer.<br />
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The objectives of such a set of sample data and sample analytics content are multiple:</div>
1) offer a real-world context that both technical and non-technical people can grasp,<br />
2) show within that context what the software has to offer (for evaluation purpuses),<br />
3) offer a demo environment for sales purposes,<br />
4) offer a tool-set for customer support to communicate and test on specific issues,<br />
5) offer a common piece of common starter code for developers to collaborate against.<br />
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Microsoft has it's <a href="https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=23654" target="_blank">Northwind and Adventureworks</a> databases, and the derived Foodmart for OLAP. Oracle has the employee data in the Scott/Tiger schema. Business Objects used to ship with the eFashion.mdb and eFashion.unv, Crystal Reports used the Xtreme data, and Cognos comes with the Great Outdoors Company data. The newer players on the market seem to offer more. <a href="http://www.tableausoftware.com/public/community/sample-data-sets">Tableau offers several data sets</a>. Qlikview have made sample applications part of their marketing strategy and have released hundreds of them in their <a href="http://us.demo.qlikview.com/">demo gallery</a>.<br />
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So let's take a moment and see what Pentaho has to offer in Pentaho EE 7. Pentaho has the <b style="text-decoration: underline;">Steel Wheels </b>demo installed with a standard installation. As you log in to the Pentaho User Console (EE Trial Edition) the Welcome screen walks you through some of the samples. </div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ANMuwLfghY0/WGTYBdhWJyI/AAAAAAAAGIo/IM1bv3n_crAjiNY30l72TLl-kAiP_w5tACLcB/s1600/Screenshot%2Bfrom%2B2016-12-29%2B10%253A31%253A10.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="281" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ANMuwLfghY0/WGTYBdhWJyI/AAAAAAAAGIo/IM1bv3n_crAjiNY30l72TLl-kAiP_w5tACLcB/s400/Screenshot%2Bfrom%2B2016-12-29%2B10%253A31%253A10.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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So how good is this demo really?<br />
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Once you open up the Browse Files perspective, you can actually see that the amount of actual reports and dashboards offered by SteelWheels, isn't very elaborate. 17 reports/dashboards in total are available. In all fairness, not a very elaborate amount. </div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-x3BCOCvBPJ4/WGTYeO0MOLI/AAAAAAAAGIs/0SuoHv-xrJYBpr4QDXtWGra7Q073vS-lQCLcB/s1600/Screenshot%2Bfrom%2B2016-12-29%2B10%253A33%253A20.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-x3BCOCvBPJ4/WGTYeO0MOLI/AAAAAAAAGIs/0SuoHv-xrJYBpr4QDXtWGra7Q073vS-lQCLcB/s400/Screenshot%2Bfrom%2B2016-12-29%2B10%253A33%253A20.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="text-align: justify;">And if you look under the covers, the complexity of the available content does not nearly cover the functionality and actual strengths of the Pentaho platform.</span><br />
<span style="text-align: justify;"><br /></span>
Also the data set itself is pretty limited. If you open up the sample database, located in a HyperSonic database in the install directory/server/hsql-sample-database folder, then you'll see there is only a handful of tables in the sample database, and the amount of data in the tables, is not what you would expect from a "big data company".<br />
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-kv-OYELKOng/WGPxDZrE0LI/AAAAAAAAGHs/DogAurziLUUhURU0rqF7VcPBJ_zZRSfvgCLcB/s1600/Screenshot%2Bfrom%2B2016-12-28%2B18%253A04%253A04.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="230" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-kv-OYELKOng/WGPxDZrE0LI/AAAAAAAAGHs/DogAurziLUUhURU0rqF7VcPBJ_zZRSfvgCLcB/s400/Screenshot%2Bfrom%2B2016-12-28%2B18%253A04%253A04.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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But obviously a lot of the above has a simple explanation or even needs no explaining to those who have followed Pentaho over the years. The demo holds a lot of the heritage from when Pentaho was the affordable open source business analytics alternative for the SMB market. The company has come a long way since. And business analytics demo for the SMB market is a totally different thing than a big data analytics demo for the enterprise space. <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/alastairdryburgh/2016/12/17/growth-stories-change-everything/#1609cc217352" target="_blank">In essence, SteelWheels has not evolved a lot, while Pentaho has, and fast</a>. </div>
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Where am I going with this blog post?<br />
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Simple. Over the years, working with Pentaho, I've learned to extend and adapt SteelWheels to my needs. The demo is what it is. And not withstanding it's current limitations, provided you know it, you can turn it rapidly into the tool you need for whatever demo or presentation you need.</div>
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Knowing that Steel Wheels is the standard demo instrument that Pentaho makes available to all customers, resellers, partners, developers and community members, I wanted to share some of the lessons I learned over the years. I hope some of these tips and tricks can help you to turn the available demo, into a platform that helps you credibly demo the full potential of Pentaho.</div>
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The end goal? I hope that in sharing my lessons learned, others will start to submit their contributions. Maybe we'll collect sufficient materials to release Steel Wheels v4.0 and move from th Rusty Wheels to Stainless or Reinforced Steel Wheels. (My puns are aweful!)</div>
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Watch this space!<br />
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For those who used to read my blog posts years ago, when I was a more active Pentaho Community blogger, I used to add soundtracks to my blog posts. Here is the appropriate (and predictable) soundtrack for this post. Enjoy.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/-r669ksJb_0/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-r669ksJb_0?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22251486.post-54503370388523919642016-12-16T15:49:00.000+01:002016-12-16T15:49:17.020+01:00Merry Christmas !<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-d9fNVEy1rfQ/WFP-yWNAtQI/AAAAAAAAGCs/ErijR_G2qJwZNoLMGstjMJgZAKQE7_YXgCLcB/s1600/download.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="476" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-d9fNVEy1rfQ/WFP-yWNAtQI/AAAAAAAAGCs/ErijR_G2qJwZNoLMGstjMJgZAKQE7_YXgCLcB/s640/download.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22251486.post-11371395038623542722016-01-05T12:35:00.002+01:002016-01-05T12:35:56.836+01:00Happy New Year !<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-9GH1fVI8iu4/VouqQoe8VMI/AAAAAAAAFis/rAdfg86TaVk/s1600/Happy-New-Year-2016-Background5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="372" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-9GH1fVI8iu4/VouqQoe8VMI/AAAAAAAAFis/rAdfg86TaVk/s640/Happy-New-Year-2016-Background5.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22251486.post-61076137422184721002015-12-29T21:49:00.000+01:002015-12-29T21:49:10.399+01:002 years 2 months and 22 days ago<div style="text-align: justify;">
5 years ago I picked up responsibilities at Pentaho and as an immediate consequence my blog activities slowed down. 2 years 2 months and 22 days ago I did my last blog post. Today, I've added to my 2016 list of good intentions to restart blogging. Given the time of year, some reminiscing about the past seemed a good start.</div>
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The last 5 years have been a blast and I have picked up plenty of topics to blog about. More than I ever expected I would.</div>
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Prior to joining Pentaho I was running my own consulting business. The reason I started my own company is because my experience with the small or large consulting firms I worked for, was they were not interested in growing my experience, they just cared about utilization and billable days. When I finally took control over my own projects I could pick projects that provided me with the right level of new experience and learning.</div>
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Working for myself gave me access to large enterprises as well as SMBs, international and local, across various sectors, filling all possible roles in a business analytics project, doing short and long term gigs, training complete BI newbie developers and presenting to the board of directors of a large multi national. Working for myself led me to explore open source BI technology ahead of the curve and I was the first to market and sell open source BI projects on the Benelux market.</div>
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So when I joined Pentaho, after 10 years of being self employed, I truly believed I had seen most of what business analytics had to offer. Boy was I wrong!</div>
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The last 5 years with Pentaho gave me the opportunity to participate in 5 fold the amount of business analytics projects compare to the 15 years before. I ran some stats. We did 313 business analytics projects in which I filled every possible role between technical expert and project sponsor. The ability to oversee such an enormous amount of implementations has provided me with a learning experience in the field, I did not anticipate.</div>
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Additionally, I had the chance to start riding the big data wave very early. Already when I joined Pentaho, the first Hadoop connectors were created and Pentaho moved into the big data analytics space before any other analytics and dat integation company. Learning the new big data related capabilities, helping sales position and scope big data projects and actually implementing a broad range of big data projects for various customers across Europe, was a great learning experience too.</div>
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And finally there was the rapid growth of the company. Pentaho exploded from a small start up with hardly any presence in EMEA, to the large EMEA/APAC team we have today. It's been a challenge growing the consulting team from a 1 man band to the large consulting group we have now. Even (or especially) after the company got acquired by Hitachi earlier this year, growth stays very high in the services area, offering plenty of opportunity for larger and more complex business analytics implementations. </div>
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So stay tuned for some more blog posts over the next weeks and months. I believe I learned some new tricks that are worth sharing, and to find the time in 2016 to write them up.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22251486.post-887978026768736962013-09-20T18:22:00.001+02:002018-12-15T23:40:54.090+01:00Community activitySummer's ended and there's a good deal of <a href="http://community.pentaho.com/">Pentaho community</a> action going on.<br />
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<span style="text-align: justify;">First of all, </span><b style="text-align: justify;">the mother of all Pentaho Community events</b><span style="text-align: justify;">, the yearly Pentaho Community Meetup, PCM13, is taking place in the beautiful town of Sintra (near Lisbon) in Portugal on October 4th- 6th. I'd say inscribe on </span><a href="https://pcm13.eventbrite.com/" style="text-align: justify;" target="_blank">Eventbrite</a><span style="text-align: justify;">, but the place is sold out! Our host is Pentaho's own </span><a href="http://pedroalves-bi.blogspot.it/2013/04/a-new-challenge-webdetails-joins-pentaho.html" style="text-align: justify;" target="_blank">Senior Vice President of Community</a><span style="text-align: justify;">, </span><a href="http://pedroalves-bi.blogspot.it/" style="text-align: justify;" target="_blank">Pedro Alves</a><span style="text-align: justify;">, also head of </span><a href="http://www.webdetails.pt/pcm13/" style="text-align: justify;" target="_blank">Webdetails</a><span style="text-align: justify;">. While typically organization of the Community Events is left to non-Pentaho community members, Pedro has taken the lead this year, no doubt to share his vision on the role of the Pentaho Community in the whole Pentaho eco-system.</span><br />
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<span style="text-align: justify;">At the same time, local user groups continue to take place in different places.</span><br />
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<li>PLUG, the <b><a href="http://wiki.pentaho.com/display/COM/Pentaho+London+User+Group+-+PLUG">Pentaho London User Group</a></b>, has it's next meetup on October 16th. More information on the event and inscriptions on <a href="http://www.meetup.com/Pentaho-London-User-Group/events/125214682/">Meetup.com</a>. The event is organised by<a href="http://www.linkedin.com/pub/dan-keeley/2/303/177"> Dan Keeley,</a> Community Member since the start of Pentaho and obviously the <a href="http://meteorite.bi/">Meteorite BI team</a> will be there too.</li>
<li>PBUG, the <a href="http://wiki.pentaho.com/display/COM/Pentaho+Benelux+User+Group+-+PBUG">P<b>entaho Benelux User Group</b></a>, has it's first meetup on October 24th in the station of Antwerp. More information can be found on <a href="http://www.know.bi/?page_id=42">know.bi's blog</a> and inscriptions can be done via <a href="http://pbug13.eventbrite.com/">Eventbrite</a>. Hosts are <a href="http://be.linkedin.com/in/bmaertens">Bart Maertens</a>, again another <a href="http://b-e-o.blogspot.it/">Pentaho Community member of the first hour</a>, and Pentaho's own <a href="http://www.ibridge.be/">Matt Casters</a>, chief architect for Pentaho Data Integration.</li>
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I'll be joining at least 2 of those. Hope to see you there too!<br />
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PS: Pentaho Community Members seem to have great taste in choosing locations ....<br />
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---<br />
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The virtual ink on this blogpost hadn't dried up yet and <a href="http://www.osbi.fr/">www.osbi.fr</a> (aka <a href="https://twitter.com/osbi_fr">Sylvain Decloix</a>, longstanding Pentaho Community Member) came up with a blog post suggesting a "<a href="http://www.osbi.fr/rencontre-de-la-communaute-pentaho-en-france/"><b>Rencontre de la communauté Pentaho France</b></a>". This just underlines what I stated in the title of my blogpost, namely there's a great deal of Community activity going on. Rightly so because at <a href="http://www.know.bi/?p=268">PCM13</a> both <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYptoFm3ou4&feature=share&list=PL5BrUFIbDqqsNBPe-jMNEqq3CTexA-mGv">Pedro Alves</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vu3-MRqjPyY&feature=share&list=PL5BrUFIbDqqsNBPe-jMNEqq3CTexA-mGv">Doug Johnson</a> underlined the importance of the Pentaho Community in Pentaho's ecosystem. Surely that'll only cause more activity.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22251486.post-24805570844844846912012-09-29T14:27:00.001+02:002018-12-15T23:41:57.538+01:00PCMAMSFor two years in a row I've live blogged the Pentaho Community Meet-up. This year I'm at home sick and cannot attend. Bart Maertens from <a href="http://know.bi/">know.bi</a> is taking up the blog work for this year. For those who land accidently on my blog, guessing they'll find something, here's the link to where the action is happening: <a href="http://blog.know.bi/">blog.know.bi</a> and a quick link to the <a href="https://twitter.com/i/#!/search/?q=%23pcmams&src=typd" target="_blank">tweet feed</a>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22251486.post-90018493455588305722012-02-07T11:42:00.001+01:002018-12-15T22:46:34.771+01:00Pentaho Report Designer with dynamic queries<div style="text-align: left;">
Already a year old, but still a cool tutorial.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22251486.post-46338090132935582292011-09-24T10:52:00.001+02:002018-12-15T23:42:16.492+01:00Pentaho Community Gathering (Live)This year PCG11 is happening in Frascati, just outside Rome. No <a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_C0PnWJwDRZY/TJ3OBbbQbYI/AAAAAAAAAbg/mLaWVrO-MUI/s1600/IMAG0645.jpg">sea-side</a> this year, but the famous hills of Rome. As last year, I'll try to do a <span id="goog_1589414989"></span>live write-out, as things happen. (The first two presentations will be posted with some delay as the hotel wireless was down in the morning.)<br />
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As during the prevous years, we have a full house of Pentaho enthusiasts ...<br />
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<b>9h45 Doug Moran</b><br />
As usual, Doug kicked-off, with a short introduction of the event. No pictures of that as I was still complaining to the hotel staff about the failing wireless at that time.<br />
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<b>10h Matt Casters</b><br />
Matt gives an update of some of the new kettle stuff:<br />
- DataCleaner profiling integration<br />
- kettle JDBC driver ported over to Kettle trunk, in use in the DataCleaner integration<br />
- KFF into PDI 4.3: first overview of the plans to move technical parts of KFF into Kettle trunk<br />
- An overview of what happened with dynamic ETL Metadata injection<br />
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He does remind the audience and speakers that there is an unwritten PCG rule, that all presentations should be done without the use of Powerpoint, something that last year wasn't really respected. However, this will not stop me from putting up any Power Points people should have made!<br />
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<b>10h 15 Pedro Alves</b><br />
Pedro gives a live demo of how CDF dashboard parts can easily be added on a Pentaho report. This is done through custom plugins for PRD/BI server that allow directly accessing CDA and CDF components.<br />
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<b>10h40 Alain Debecker</b><br />
Alain explains how he joined linalis (Geneva) to come back to Pentaho and why he is talking about security. He started the development of a UI to manage Mondrian role grants of a complex customer. He also explained how Kettle can be used to load a set of users from an employee database. Finally, he promises a white paper soon to be published on this subject.<br />
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<b>11h00 Coffee break</b><br />
First presentations are over and the crowd (mostly with serious hangovers from the day before) are craving for coffee. And while the Italian organization hasn't proved the best a setting up the wireless, the coffee table looks quite good.<br />
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<b>11h15 Roland Bouman</b> (<a href="https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B7pEch_luF0xYzY2NjA5NWItYWQ5Zi00MjhlLTg5NGEtNTdlYmIzNzA2ZDI5&hl=en_GB">presentation</a>)<br />
Roland walks us through the concepts of <b><a href="http://code.google.com/p/xmla4js/">XMLA4JS</a></b> his the wrapper around XMLA which allows accessing XMLA through Javascript. Since PCG11 he's been working with people from Palo to extend this. He's has also collaborated with Andy Grohe from Pentaho to put an object model on top of XMLA4JS that would make usage of XMLA4JS easier.<br />
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Roland explains the progress that has been made on <b><a href="http://code.google.com/p/kettle-cookbook/">kettle Cookbook</a></b> since last PCG (and demo's it):<br />
<ul>
<li>Nicer diagrams (thanks to Slawo), </li>
<li>syntax highlighting, </li>
<li>TOC, </li>
<li>Incremental generation, </li>
<li>Saxon configurable, </li>
<li>xaction documentation and M</li>
<li>Mondrian schema documentation.</li>
</ul>
Especially mondrian schema documentation with an overview of (shared) dimensions and facts with a visualization of the star schema is looking very nice.<br />
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Ongoing work on Cookbook:<br />
<ul>
<li>kettle repository support</li>
<li>KREX (Kettle repository export)</li>
</ul>
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Ideas for the future:</div>
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<ul>
<li>Using the kettle auto documentation step?</li>
<li>Data lineage?</li>
<li>xaction flowcharts</li>
<li>prpt report documentation</li>
<li>diagrams for SQL queries</li>
</ul>
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<b><a href="http://code.google.com/p/pendular/">Pendular</a></b> is Roland's latest hobby project. The idea behind Pendular is to provide a Pentaho interfaces that is better suited for mobile devices. Also here, we get a short demo. For those who are curious, here's a <a href="http://youtu.be/apElEaHZM2g">link to a YouTube video</a> Matt made of Pendular when Roland release it.<br />
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And to end, Roland announces the crowd that he'll be joining the dark side soon. Another Pentaho rock-star joining Pentaho. But don't worry, not every one in the community will join Pentaho :-)<br />
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<b>11h30 Gretchen Moran </b>(<a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B7pEch_luF0xODIzYjE2NTgtMWVhZS00ZGVlLTk0NDMtZjM2YWI5MmI4OWE0&hl=en_GB">presentation</a>)<br />
And while Roland is joining Pentaho, Gretchen announces PCG that she' is leaving Pentaho. She'll be working with OpenMRS in the future and she'll<br />
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<a href="http://openmrs.org/">OpenMRS</a> was created as a response to HIV. There was limited infrastructure and what was in place was totally overloaded. While HIV can be treated, tracking treatments for millions of patient requires however a serious information management system. That's what OpenMRS (Open Medical Record System) was created for.<br />
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There's no "commercial side" to OpenMRS. OpenMRS have a great and large community. Gretchen has dived into that community in order to help them set up Pentaho BI with OpenMRS since they currently have no or very limited insight in their data. She has done a quick proof of concept for OpenMRS management who were extremely enthusiast.<br />
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So this presentation really is a call to the community to help set up a 100% open source BI implementation for OpenMRS, using Saiku, C*tools, and all other funky community resources.<br />
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<b>11h45 Jos van Dongen & Aly Hollander </b>(<a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B7pEch_luF0xNTc2MjhhNDItZTkyNi00YmI0LThmMGUtYTQ2YjJhYTU5MWVi&hl=en_GB">presentation</a>)<br />
And to continue in the medical field Jos and Aly present the Pentaho BI implementation at St. Antonius hospitals. St. Antonius have their home built system for the administration of the hospital. About 2 years back St. Antonius started deploying Pentaho BI on top of that system. Aly gives an overview of how their systems were developed and how the Pentaho BI project was run. Next Jos shows a great set of C*tools dashboards from the St Antonius implementation.<br />
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<b>12h15 Luc and Julian</b> (<a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B7pEch_luF0xOWU4MzMwMDctYjdjZS00NmEyLTg4MjctMTc4YTFjNjM0OGYx&hl=en_GB">presentation</a>)<br />
Julian quickly explains how roles for Mondrian development are divided between himself and Luc. After that Luc gives an overview of all the Mondrian 3.3 features. All the new features are well documented in the presentation, so no need to fully replicate that here.<br />
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Julian quickly updates us on the following topics:<br />
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<ul>
<li>Hyde Son 2.0, some time off for the kids which allows Mondrian coding time</li>
<li>His new MacBook air and when he'll start wearing designer clothes</li>
<li>OLAP4J 1.0</li>
<li>Mondrian Enterprise Cache</li>
<li>Mondrian 4.0</li>
</ul>
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Until now we've managed almost to stick to the talk schedule. Tom's presentation is the only one that will be shifted to the afternoon.<br />
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<b>13h00 Lunch</b><br />
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The general idea behind having the lunch in the hotel of the venue was to save time. Julian finished around 13h30 and we still managed to squeeze in time for starters, primi, desert and coffee in slightly under an hour leaving more time for presentations.<br />
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<b>14h30 Tom and Paul </b>(<a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B7pEch_luF0xZDhhOTYyMTAtMzhlZS00OWVjLTk2NjgtZGM1NDQ2YjIwNWY2&hl=en_GB">presentation</a>)<br />
Paul shows off the Pentaho hosting environment that Meteorite is setting up. The original idea was to automate the set-up of a new Pentaho environment, but it grew into a full hosting offer. Through a simple web interface you can now generate your own Pentaho environment, choose what database you want underneath it, the hosting provider you want to run it with, etc. <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B7pEch_luF0xZDhhOTYyMTAtMzhlZS00OWVjLTk2NjgtZGM1NDQ2YjIwNWY2&hl=en_GB">The slides tell the story</a>.<br />
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<b>14:45 Pedro Pinhero</b><br />
Pedro demo's CDF for mobile platforms. No need for words, as you can access the demo directly here: <a href="http://goo.gl/pcbWv">http://goo.gl/pcbWv</a><br />
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<b>15h10 Pedro Alves</b><br />
Pedro gives an overview of the Firefox Telemetry project.<br />
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<b>15h30 Matt Casters</b><br />
Pentaho's Chief Data Integration is back onstage with an explanation on the Single Threader step.<br />
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<b>15h40 Cees Vkemenade</b><br />
Cees has worked with Jos on the St. Antonius Ziekenhuis project(s). When using CDF, they realized they needed a functionality to deploy changes to different environments.<br />
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<b>15h50 Thomas Morgner </b>(<a href="http://www.sherito.org/2011/09/cdf-based-parameter-viewer.html">blog post</a>)<br />
Thomas shows how you can set up a light-weight report viewer (no GWT) as a follow up of a <a href="http://www.sherito.org/2011/06/creating-your-own-parameter-ui-for.html">blog post</a> he did a short time back. Given the enthusiast feedback he got on this post, he also goes for some discussion on how these ideas could evolve.<br />
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<b>16h20 Bart Maertens</b><br />
Bart gives us an update of his <b>BIRT plugin for the Pentaho BI server</b>. Even though obviously BIRT is similar to PRD, there are a few functionalities (as cross tab reports) which aren't available in PRD, that might make it interesting to use BIRT for reporting.<br />
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Bart quickly shows how the plugin should be installed/configured and then shows how that works and looks like in the BI server. For those interested, here's some blogposts bart did on the subject.<br />
<ul>
<li><a href="http://b-e-o.blogspot.com/2010/09/running-fully-functional-eclipse-birt.html">http://b-e-o.blogspot.com/2010/09/running-fully-functional-eclipse-birt.html</a></li>
<li><a href="http://b-e-o.blogspot.com/2011/08/running-fully-functional-eclipse-birt.html">http://b-e-o.blogspot.com/2011/08/running-fully-functional-eclipse-birt.html</a></li>
</ul>
A BIRT reporting output step has been developed to. Bart based himself on the PRD Output Step in PDI. So it is now possible to set up a scheduling of BIRT reports through Pentaho Data Integration. The code for the step is already part of the kettle trunk.<br />
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<b>16h30 Coffee break and group picture</b><br />
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Only coffee though:</div>
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<b>17h00 Jens Bleuel </b>(presentation)</div>
This year Jens moved from Pentaho's professional services division to product management. Jens has been working over the last year on connecting PDI to his son's electric train. kettle controls the stops of the trains through a relay.<br />
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(also in <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqyZyAxWheQ&feature=youtube_gdata_player">high quality</a>)</div>
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He has made some of the information from this project available on the <a href="http://wiki.pentaho.com/display/EAI/Kettle+Exchange">kettle exchange site</a> (and added <a href="http://wiki.pentaho.com/display/EAI/Connect+the+K8055+Hardware+Device+with+Kettle">full write up</a> later during the year).<br />
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He also shared some ideas he is working on in PDI product management as:<br />
<ul>
<li>lifecycle management</li>
<li>the heat maps</li>
<li>implement ID's for PDI steps </li>
<li>best practices, concepts and solutions on Wiki</li>
</ul>
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<b>17h25 Paul </b>(<a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B7pEch_luF0xODE2ZWQ2NzEtYWFkMC00NGRhLWE0OTctZGQwYjE4NWZmMDli&hl=en_GB">presentation</a>)<br />
Paul is back with an overview of Saiku. Since the PAT presentation of last year the team was extended. Paul and Tom are now assisted by 2 other guys. Paul demo's all the cool features of Saiku and gives an overview of the road map. All very well documented in the slides.<br />
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Some really exciting stuff is almost ready to put int Saiku 2.2<br />
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<li>Graphs (through CCC)</li>
<li>Write-back (with different allocation policies)</li>
</ul>
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No kidding! This one is absolutely mega!!!</div>
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... and what else will follow for 2.2 are security (working with roles) and using Saiku on mobile platforms.<br />
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Some stuff that's in the backlog:<br />
<ul>
<li>C*tools integration</li>
<li>PRD export</li>
<li>Drill-down</li>
<li>Parameters</li>
</ul>
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<b>17h50 Marioz</b><br />
Marioz is showing a light weight ad-hoc reporting tool which uses the Saiku interface to report on top of a meta-data layer in order to generate and execute queries. He also wants to merge PRPT functionality into this in order to leverage PRD's lay-outing possibilities.<br />
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<b>18h00 Ricardo Pires </b>(presentation)<br />
Ricardo gives an overview of the <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pentaho-fc-plugin/">Pentaho Fusion Charts Plugin</a> XpandIT have developed (see also <a href="http://wiki.pentaho.com/display/COM/April+20,+2011+-+Ricardo+Pires+-+Xpand+IT+FusionCharts+Plug-in">WebEx</a> on this topic earlier this year). There have been a lot of downloads since it was released so it would seem there is a lot of interest for this type of charting in Pentaho.<br />
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And there is a small tutorial on YouTube.<br />
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<b>18h10 Slawo Chodnicki</b><br />
Slawo has been working on a <b>Ruby scripting step </b>for PDI that used JRuby<b>. </b>More information and the code are as always well clearly laid out on his <a href="http://type-exit.org/adventures-with-open-source-bi/2011/03/releasing-the-ruby-scripting-step-for-kettle/">blog</a>.<br />
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<b>18h40 Roland Bouman </b>(presentation)<br />
And to wrap up, Roland is giving a talk about <b>data vault and anchor modeling</b>.<br />
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<b>And #PCM11 / #PCG11 is over </b><br />
<b>... thanks for joining us!</b><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comVia Vittorio Veneto, 6-14, 00044 Frascati Rome, Italy41.805197795797334 12.6764845848083541.803718295797331 12.67401708480835 41.806677295797336 12.678952084808349tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22251486.post-54993780322026967082011-09-20T15:34:00.002+02:002011-09-24T10:52:50.364+02:00Once twitten, twice shyIn the preparation for the <a href="http://wiki.pentaho.com/display/COM/Pentaho+Community+Gathering+-+Rome+%28Frascati%29+2011">Pentaho Community Meeting 2011 in Frascati</a>, I suddenly recalled some events that occurred during the <a href="http://forums.pentaho.com/showthread.php?81263-Pentaho-Community-Meetup-2011">voting for the location</a>.<br />
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One week before the closing of the votes, @magicaltrout fueled the discussion.<br />
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Luckily Twitter allowed me to go back in time to dig up some tweets from prominent members of the Pentaho Community. There seems to be a clear indication that members have been trying to "buy votes" in order to influence the location of the event. Below tweets clearly illustrate this.<br />
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Now, I don't believe there is any rule against such bribery as long as the bribes are being paid.<br />
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So, if I've been reading right, we should figure out when the community can cash in on the following:<br />
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<ul>
<li>beers from @josvandongen</li>
<li>wine from @mattcasters</li>
<li>grappa from @rolandbouwman</li>
<li>home brew liquor from @jan_aertsen</li>
</ul>
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Being on the list, I suggest I'll bring my bottles on friday evening. I guess the Community will figure out a right place and time to consume! </div>
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As for the others: your words have not been forgotten. Watch out what you tweet next time.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22251486.post-67475783530672137152011-08-30T23:11:00.001+02:002011-08-30T23:12:55.424+02:00PCG11 ProloguePentaho usage is growing rapidly, and thus those who have Pentaho skills are very busy. As a consequence, the organization of the annual Pentaho Community Gathering has been 'a bit slow' this year. And while Pentaho employees normally aren't allowed to stick their nose in community business, somehow the organization of this years venue ended up on my task list. (Thanks Doug!)<br />
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So there I was, mid August, 40 days to go, nothing set. I asked my wife to call some hotels and by August 22nd answers arrived. After some comparison of offers a decision was made on order of preference. To finalize the selection process and in order to make sure the community would get the very best location on this side of the planet, I decided to go and have a look on the spot.<br />
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I jumped in my car and started driving, whilst punching the address of the first hotel into the GPS. Only 1576km and I could be there by the next morning 7AM. I've done BI projects that lasted a lot longer, so piece of cake. Here's the dashboard (sorry Pedro, not done with Ctools):<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-2197f5_JbBM/TleEoCi3BZI/AAAAAAAAA00/f36VmT-Qfks/s1600/IMAG1300.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-2197f5_JbBM/TleEoCi3BZI/AAAAAAAAA00/f36VmT-Qfks/s640/IMAG1300.jpg" width="380" /></a></div><br />
Unfortunately, weather conditions weren't that good. While driving through France heavy rain showers hit me. It slowed me down seriously and even obliged me to stop over in Switserland, waiting for things to clear up. And if that wasn't enough, when I started the journey again, the next day, a sudden temperature drop made things even worse.<br />
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Here's the dashboard (because we love them so much) showing the situation (again Pedro, sorry no Ctools):<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-GBFSjwuMJzM/Tlq4FZxQCrI/AAAAAAAAA3g/9tcuALxFgrY/s1600/IMAG1314.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="238" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-GBFSjwuMJzM/Tlq4FZxQCrI/AAAAAAAAA3g/9tcuALxFgrY/s400/IMAG1314.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
Yes, if you look carefully the dashboard says <u>zero degrees</u>. And for those who think you can prove anything with numbers and dashboards, here's the pictures of the road situation at that time.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YfCORcSjuGc/Tlq4fV2V6AI/AAAAAAAAA3k/ta26pR112nk/s1600/IMAG1315.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="119" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YfCORcSjuGc/Tlq4fV2V6AI/AAAAAAAAA3k/ta26pR112nk/s200/IMAG1315.jpg" width="200" /></a><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-P2MV_PtXDgI/Tlq4l9sqL1I/AAAAAAAAA3o/H5vTQDLd4cA/s1600/IMAG1319.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="119" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-P2MV_PtXDgI/Tlq4l9sqL1I/AAAAAAAAA3o/H5vTQDLd4cA/s200/IMAG1319.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><br />
But a Community Gathering had to be booked. And I needed to move on. Once I passed the alps weather cleared up seriously, and I started trying to catch up the time I lost. Just after lunch temperatures started to be more acceptable (33 degrees) and I had found a nice cruise speed to make it to Frascati in a reasonable hour.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ykKhgF8Fzdo/Tlq5mT2SdgI/AAAAAAAAA3s/6pgEv15CKK8/s1600/IMAG1329.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="238" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ykKhgF8Fzdo/Tlq5mT2SdgI/AAAAAAAAA3s/6pgEv15CKK8/s400/IMAG1329.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
And around 15h30, I finally reached Frascati. I visited some of the locations, I finally opted for <a href="http://www.hotel-flora.it/">Hotel Flora</a>, as you can read by now on the <a href="http://wiki.pentaho.com/display/COM/Pentaho+Community+Gathering+-+Rome+%28Frascati%29+2011">PCM11 wiki pages</a>.<br />
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<b>Why do I want to share this silly story? Basically, I'd like to express my great appreciation for all the people who volunteered to set up the Pentaho Community Gatherings in the past. Organizing such an event does take time, and it is amazing that Pentaho Community members have always picked this up, notwithstanding busy agenda's and thousands of more interesting things to do :-). So, to who picked this up in the past, and to who'll pick this up in the future: a great thanks.</b>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22251486.post-65316650143417080372011-04-21T10:46:00.001+02:002018-12-15T22:47:38.528+01:00Proprietary BI vendors feel the heatCommercial open source software for BI has been coming up strong for the last years and keeps on marching forward at a rapid pace. For several years now, we have experienced in several projects that commercial open source BI is a viable alternative for the traditional vendors. Gartner has been slow to confirm that (as they usually are when it comes to open source), but they their recent market studies now include open source consistently. And today I noticed that also the proprietary vendors have to publicly admit that they feel the competition from the open source vendors. Look at <a href="http://www.microstrategy.com/software/comparison/">this page on the MicroStrategy website</a>. They clearly feel they need to compare themselves to Pentaho, and since they are comparing to version 3.6 which has been out for about a year, I'd guess they have been doing a lot of explaining to their customers since some time already.<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22251486.post-74119279041241446202011-03-09T16:54:00.000+01:002011-03-09T16:54:01.857+01:00I feel rejected!<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;">On september 21st 2010, I wrote in <a href="http://kjube.blogspot.com/2010/09/kff-slowly-coming-out-of-kitchen-closet.html">this blog post</a> the following lines.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></div><ul style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><li><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Rejects</b>: A generic component for error handling. It will converge all error records into one common format so all your rejects fit in one and the same output file or table. We'll elaborate on this one soon in an extra blogpost. Documentation will be added to the <b><a href="http://code.kjube.be/">KFF pages</a></b>.</span></li>
</ul><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;">Today, while on the phone with "<a href="http://ramathoughts.blogspot.com/">a fan of the art of data integration through the means of Pentaho Data Integration</a>", I realised that I never wrote that extra blogpost, and neither did anyone update the KFF pages with regard to the "Rejects Step". So it is time I amend.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Error handling in kettle</span></b></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;"> </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;">The standard error handling in kettle is probably well know to all of you. For those who aren't up to speed, a quick intro follows here.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;"> A common scenario is shown below.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><a href="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-H2pkutR1S5o/TXeRB7LRIpI/AAAAAAAAAjQ/yN_jIS-FKn8/s1600/screenshot013.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-H2pkutR1S5o/TXeRB7LRIpI/AAAAAAAAAjQ/yN_jIS-FKn8/s400/screenshot013.png" width="580" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;">You have stored information in the staging area of your data warehouse, which you need to load into an ODS. The ODS area of your data warehouse however needs to contain validated or clean data. Therefore your ODS table(s) may have foreign key or other constraints to ensure that your data is correct. Consequently any record you try to write to the ODSTable, but that isn't allowed by the data model for whatever reason (value larger than the field, precision not correct, foreign key not found, ...) will throw an error and your transformation will end with errors. </span><br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;">This will make you, as an professional data integration designer/developer, very unhappy. So you will adjust your transformation and put a lot of logic between the data in and data out steps, to ensure that everything can be loaded correctly to the target model. </span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-Qsdzsu56UsY/TXeRS4YrbXI/AAAAAAAAAjU/_FcHHEnpsgs/s1600/screenshot014.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-Qsdzsu56UsY/TXeRS4YrbXI/AAAAAAAAAjU/_FcHHEnpsgs/s400/screenshot014.png" width="580" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;">But nevermind how precise and clearvoyant you are, at some point in time you will have some nasty record passing by for which you didn't write the right code, and bang, your transformation goes in error. Then you discover kettle has error handling functionality for these nasty records. Yes, kettle can divert records, which the data output steps cannot process, to another step. That looks as follows.</span><br />
<a href="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-y5PIcEaspsw/TXeRx0mFB1I/AAAAAAAAAjY/Ox-CoNwJq0I/s1600/screenshot015.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-y5PIcEaspsw/TXeRx0mFB1I/AAAAAAAAAjY/Ox-CoNwJq0I/s320/screenshot015.png" width="580" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;">Basically, what is done very often, is just divert the records that cannot be inserted into the database to a flat file, and leave it there so some one can have a look at why this record wasn't inserted into the ODS or data warehouse. At the same time this permits your data flow to end without throwing errors and aborting in the mid of the night so you need to get up and restart that data warehouse load or else you'll find 10 angry managers at your desk in the morning.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;">In the data output step where you enable the error handling (in this case the ODSTable step), you can decide some extra settings for the error handling.</span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-tUxel22OmxQ/TXeYxKnIIUI/AAAAAAAAAjc/CTGbiFlqNbU/s1600/screenshot016.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-tUxel22OmxQ/TXeYxKnIIUI/AAAAAAAAAjc/CTGbiFlqNbU/s320/screenshot016.png" width="580" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;"> </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;">For those who want to read up bit on this feature, go and surf the net. Try these pages:</span><br />
<ul><li><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.ibridge.be/?p=32">original blog post</a> from 2007 when <a href="http://www.ibridge.be/?page_id=2">Matt</a> first released error handling</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;">Pentaho wiki: the <a href="http://wiki.pentaho.com/display/EAI/Data+Validator">data validator and error handling</a></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;">Pentaho wiki: <a href="http://wiki.pentaho.com/display/COM/Step+error+handling+codes">error handling codes</a> </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;"><a href="http://type-exit.org/adventures-with-open-source-bi/about/">Slawo</a> in 2010 on <a href="http://type-exit.org/adventures-with-open-source-bi/2010/06/error-handling-in-the-javascript-step/">Javascript step and error handling</a> </span></li>
</ul><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;">The documentation isn't abundant, but the information is out there. My little scenario ends here, because I really want to talk about the '<b>Rejects step</b>' and not do a write up on Error handling in PDI. So here I go.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;">Why a rejects step, if kettle already does it all?</span><br />
</span></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;">As you might guess from the above scenario, one of the problems you often end up with if you push all the rejects to flat files, is that you end up with a large amount of files, with a lot of records to analyze for data quality. If you are lucky, you are working with to shelf data, and you'll have few rejected records and few files to look at, but most people will not be that lucky.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;">So as your data warehouse grows (not only in size, but also in data integration logic and code), the amount of rejects files will grow and you'll loose the overview of what is happening in terms of data quality.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;">To avoid this problem, we came up with the idea to merge all rejects into one single database table. This has some advantages:</span><br />
<ul><li><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;">Having all your rejects in one single place, makes it easy to make some statistics on your rejected records.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;">If they are in a database table, they really are just part of your data integration logging, and therefore you can easily include them in the logging reports you already make every day to see/show how the ETL runs have been going.</span></li>
</ul><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;">So what does it look like?</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-eMufXnkk2jk/TXeY8n482DI/AAAAAAAAAjg/umu1k3SWCBU/s1600/screenshot018.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-eMufXnkk2jk/TXeY8n482DI/AAAAAAAAAjg/umu1k3SWCBU/s320/screenshot018.png" width="580" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;"></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;"></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;">Basically nothing has been modified to the standard error handling mechanism of PDI. The only thing we added was the output step for the rejects. In this step you can define the following things:</span><br />
<ul><li><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i><b>Rejected records connection</b></i>: database connection to which you want to write the rejects (this can be a parameter)</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i><b>Rejected records schema</b></i>: database schema o which you want to write the rejects (this can be a parameter) </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i><b>Rejected records table</b></i>: database table to which you want to write the rejects (this can be a parameter) </span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;"> </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i><b>Error count field</b></i>: name that you want to give the column containing the error count (this can be a parameter) </span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;"> </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i><b>Error descriptions field</b></i>: name that you want to give the column containing the error description (this can be a parameter) </span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;"> </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i><b>Error fields field</b></i>: name that you want to give the column containing the error fields (this can be a parameter) </span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;"> </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i><b>Error codes field</b></i>: name that you want to give the column containing the error code (this can be a parameter) </span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;"> </span></li>
</ul><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;">Below those input fields you can specify which list of incoming fields make up the key of your record.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;"> </span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-Pp1gzFYAMFs/TXeZQH0Bp8I/AAAAAAAAAjk/XhHc4JjBa7s/s1600/screenshot019.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-Pp1gzFYAMFs/TXeZQH0Bp8I/AAAAAAAAAjk/XhHc4JjBa7s/s320/screenshot019.png" width="580" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The rejects table will have the following lay-out. </span></div><ul><li style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">id: This column contains all the key fields of your rejected record in comma separated format (provided you specified them in the rejects step)</span><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></li>
<li style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">value: </span><span style="font-size: small;">This column contains all the remaining (non-key) fields of your rejected record in comma separated format</span><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></li>
<li style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">batch_id: Your batch ID (see KFF)</span></li>
<li style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">transname: name of the transformation that generated the reject</span></li>
<li style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">jobname: name of the job that generated the reject</span></li>
<li style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">stepname: name of the step that generated the reject</span></li>
<li style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">${error_count_field}: nbr of errors</span></li>
<li style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">${error_descriptions_field}: error description</span></li>
<li style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">${error_fields}: field that generated the error</span></li>
<li style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">${error_codes}: error code</span><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">logdate: date/time of the reject</span></span></li>
</ul><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;">Simple enough to write some statistics on. Should I want to know which steps generate most errors, a simple query of the type: </span><br />
<blockquote><div style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: small;">select stepname, count(*)</span></div><div style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: small;">from ${rejected_records_table}</span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">group by stepname</span></span></blockquote><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;">would tell me enough.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;">Now if you add the element time to this, storing your rejects for each nightly batch run, you can plot a nice evolution of how you have been handling data quality problems over time. Any data warehouse project will sooner or later require this kind of statistics, because data quality problems are there. The question is only when they will surface.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;"><b>Good luck with it!</b><br />
</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22251486.post-37877431127240107492011-03-08T12:21:00.000+01:002018-12-15T22:36:11.148+01:00Another kettle book on its way ...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">
For the kettle afinados out there, two excellent PDI books are already available namely: </div>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li style="text-align: justify;"><a href="https://www.packtpub.com/pentaho-32-data-integration-beginners-guide/book">Pentaho 3.2 Data Integration - Beginners Guide</a>, by <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; line-height: 18px;"><a href="https://www.packtpub.com/authors/profiles/maria-carina-roldan">María Carina Roldán</a> was released in april 2010.</span></li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Pentaho Kettle Solutions - Building Open Source ETL solutions with Pentaho Data Integration, by Matt Casters, Roland Bouman and Jos van Dongen (<a href="http://kjube.blogspot.com/2010/10/pentaho-kettle-solutions-overview.html">extensively discussed in a previous post</a>) is available since september 2010.</li>
</ul>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<a href="https://www.packtpub.com/pentaho-32-data-integration-beginners-guide/book"><img border="0" src="https://static.letsbuyit.com/filer/images/uk/products/original/187/24/pentaho-3-2-data-integration-beginner-s-guide-18724176.jpeg" height="200" width="161"></a> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Pentaho-Kettle-Solutions-Building-Integration/dp/0470635177"><img border="0" src="https://www.lybrary.com/images/0470942428.jpg" height="200" width="158"></a></div>
</div>
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
And if that is not enough, another book is in the making. <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; line-height: 18px;"><a href="https://www.packtpub.com/authors/profiles/maria-carina-roldan">María Carina Roldán</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> </span>has teamed up with <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; line-height: 18px;"><a href="https://www.packtpub.com/authors/profiles/adri%C3%A1n-sergio-pulvirenti">Adrián Pulvirenti</a> to deliver the "<a href="https://www.packtpub.com/pentaho-data-integration-4-cookbook/book">Pentaho Data Integration 4: Cookbook</a>" (again with publishing house <a href="https://www.packtpub.com/">PACKT</a>). </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; line-height: 18px;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">The book will deliver a series of 'recipes' to solve typical (and less typical) kettle riddles, divided over 9 chapters with the following titles.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; line-height: 18px;"></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<ol>
<li>Working with Databases<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></li>
<li>Reading and Writing Files</li>
<li>Manipulating XML Structures<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></li>
<li>File Management<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></li>
<li>Looking up for Data</li>
<li>Understanding How Data Flows</li>
<li>Executing and Reusing Jobs and Transformations</li>
<li>Integration with Pentaho Suite</li>
<li>Some More Useful Recipes</li>
</ol>
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">I have had the pleasure revising chapters 1 to 7 up to now, and will soon read chapters 8 and 9 which are in the writing.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; line-height: 18px;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">My impression so far is that the analogy with a cookbook is actually well choosen.The recipes are organised in logical groups like you would have starters, rice dishes, deserts etc in a cookbook, but still the recipes within a same category, though logically related can be very different, like vanilla pudding and chocolate mouse. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; line-height: 18px;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">Maybe not all of them may be to your liking, as each recipe tackles a different problem. And some people just prefer chocolate over strawberry. But having said that I'm not saying you shouldn't get the book because there might be some recipes you don't like or don't want to use. Actually, while reviewing the book, I found all the recipes interesting. And even if there are a few I won't use to literally cook the dish Maria and Adrian sugges, I will use the ideas I picked up in them to flavor my own dishes.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; line-height: 18px;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;">You can already get the book in RAW format from PACKT right now, or way till the end of april until all chapters are complete and the book becomes available.</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22251486.post-35620700053953462152011-03-08T10:30:00.003+01:002011-03-08T10:31:48.522+01:00Blog for mobile devicesWe noticed that about 5% of our blog visits are from mobile devices. This percentage has been increasing steadily over the last year.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-2yZQXFX5GgE/TXX2rGex1gI/AAAAAAAAAio/a6Cbfh5RK-A/s1600/screenshot005.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-2yZQXFX5GgE/TXX2rGex1gI/AAAAAAAAAio/a6Cbfh5RK-A/s640/screenshot005.png" width="580" /></a></div><br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">Since november or december 2010, Google Blogger (finally) supports adapted lay-outs for visualization of blog pages on mobile devices. Given the fact that you are using mobile devices to look at our site, we have enabled this feature on our blog. We hope it will improve the readability of our blog while you are on the move.</div><br />
What you should see when you go to our blog on your mobile device is the following:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-LzsyJI0aWH0/TXX03o_yAfI/AAAAAAAAAik/-Ds6RS8VZNk/s1600/screenshot004.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-LzsyJI0aWH0/TXX03o_yAfI/AAAAAAAAAik/-Ds6RS8VZNk/s320/screenshot004.png" width="220" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Enjoy the reading. And don't hesitate to leave your comments.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22251486.post-67820377131650824052011-03-08T10:01:00.001+01:002018-12-15T22:26:28.454+01:00Connect as sysdbaSometimes, when working with Oracle database, you need to connect as sysdba or sysoper.<br />
<blockquote>
A user must connect AS SYSDBA or AS SYSOPER if he wants to perform one of the tasks that require <a href="http://www.adp-gmbh.ch/ora/admin/system_privileges.html#sysdba"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;">sysdba</span></a> or <a href="http://www.adp-gmbh.ch/ora/admin/system_privileges.html#sysoper"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;">sysoper</span></a> <a href="http://www.adp-gmbh.ch/ora/misc/users_roles_privs.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;">privileges</span></a>(such as to <a href="http://www.adp-gmbh.ch/ora/sqlplus/shutdown.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;">shutdown</span></a> or to <a href="http://www.adp-gmbh.ch/ora/sqlplus/startup.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;">startup</span></a> an <a href="http://www.adp-gmbh.ch/ora/admin/instance.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;">instance</span></a>. If he connects as SYSDBA, he becomes SYS, if he connects as SYSOPER, he becomes PUBLIC.</blockquote>
<div>
On the command line, using sql-plus this is pretty simple. Just add "as sysdba" to your connect statement.</div>
<blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">c</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">onnect</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"> sys/my_secret_password <b>as sysdba</b></span></blockquote>
However when you are working with a graphical user interface logging in as sysdba isn't that evident. Basically because the login box that you get presented just allows you to insert a username and a password. So where goes the "as sysdba" part?<br />
<br />
<b><i>Using SQL Developer</i></b><br />
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
Just add the "as sysdba" statement after your username. I needed this not so long ago, I luckily found it after some Googl-ing. My sql-plus isn't up to par, so really being able to use a GUI is really a time saver.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-PGTWh8gQy5Y/TWYsVPV6BJI/AAAAAAAAAhQ/YOV1xG-muKI/s1600/screenshot001.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="90" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-PGTWh8gQy5Y/TWYsVPV6BJI/AAAAAAAAAhQ/YOV1xG-muKI/s320/screenshot001.png" style="cursor: move;" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<b><i><br />
</i></b></div>
<b><i>Using Quest Toad</i></b><br />
If you are using Toad, the answer is fairly simple. They have provided a little drop down list called "connect as" which allows you to select between "normal", "sysdba" and "sysoper".<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://filedb.experts-exchange.com/incoming/2010/03_w12/271533/login.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://filedb.experts-exchange.com/incoming/2010/03_w12/271533/login.jpg" width="580"></a></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22251486.post-2167348752089945192011-03-08T07:47:00.003+01:002011-03-08T07:57:08.930+01:00AD/AC<div><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://lh4.ggpht.com/_C0PnWJwDRZY/TXXRAad925I/AAAAAAAAAig/DcmBMsbixRI/1299566672692.png" width="580" /></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22251486.post-20240006724729213372011-03-08T07:42:00.064+01:002011-03-08T08:24:46.901+01:00Mobile blogging<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">This blog post wasn't written entirely on the Mobile Blogger app by Google. Some editing has been done afterwards using the standard Blogger webinterface. All editing done afterwards is listed out below.</span></i><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">Google finally released a <a href="https://market.android.com/details?id=com.google.android.apps.blogger">mobile app for Blogger</a>. Since I happen to travel a lot the following days, I thought to give the app a try, just to kill time on the road and getting ready for the next PCG ;-)<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://ssl.gstatic.com/android/market/com.google.android.apps.blogger/ss-1-320-480-160-0-c3af2b4b7331671b6d0856a60727b131561cd253" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://ssl.gstatic.com/android/market/com.google.android.apps.blogger/ss-1-320-480-160-0-c3af2b4b7331671b6d0856a60727b131561cd253" width="192" /></a><a href="https://ssl.gstatic.com/android/market/com.google.android.apps.blogger/ss-0-320-480-160-0-a02999a8034dd533a3c776dbe3074d860e1a6227" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://ssl.gstatic.com/android/market/com.google.android.apps.blogger/ss-0-320-480-160-0-a02999a8034dd533a3c776dbe3074d860e1a6227" width="192" /></a></div><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">First of all let me say I'm a fan of the available <a href="https://market.android.com/developer?pub=Google+Inc.">Google mobile apps</a>. <a href="https://market.android.com/details?id=com.google.android.gm">Gmail</a> on Android is excellent. <a href="https://market.android.com/details?id=com.google.android.apps.maps">Mobile Maps</a> is beyond excellent. <a href="https://market.android.com/details?id=com.google.android.stardroid">Skymaps</a> is ultra cool and though I hardly use <a href="https://market.android.com/details?id=com.google.android.youtube">YouTube</a> on my computer, I started using it on Android. Needless to say I have expectations for this Mobile Blogger app.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">From the moment you fire up the app, you are connected to your Google account. Mobile single sign-on, nice. And the app will present you with your list of blogs. So you simple pick the right blog from the list and ... action.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Creating a new mobile post and edit it with Mobile Blogger is pretty intuitive. Just hit the pencil button on the main screen and you are ready to go. There is a first text box for the title and a second for your post. Easy enough to start a new post, for instance while you are standing in a cue to check in your luggage in <a href="http://www.ciampino-airport.info/">Ciampino airport</a>.</div><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="http://lh4.ggpht.com/_C0PnWJwDRZY/TXXPuP52NeI/AAAAAAAAAic/cQ3uYwAjojw/IMAG0934.png" width="580" /></div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">At the bottom of the screen there is a publish/save button, which allows you to publish your post or save a draft, same as in the web version of Blogger. I believe saving isn't done automatically (which is the case in the web interface). A bit annoying, as you will have to remember to regularly save your work. Seems like MS Office 3 dot something all over.</div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">Next to the pencil button, there is a button to see you list of mobile posts. It is important to know that that list will only show mobile posts (published and draft versions). Any drafts or posts you may have made on your pc, you will not see in this list. So forget about quickly adding a few lines to a post on which you were working from home. You just don't have access to those. And vice versa, you don't see your mobile posts in the web interface. So there is zero interoperability. A missed opportunity if you asks me. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Under the main text box, you find two buttons to add images. By now I can already tell you that you will probably use these more then actually writing text. An Android phone just isn't theft right device for massive text input. Also since you cannot lay-out (as in using bold, italics, underline, different fonts, ...) your text in Mobile Blogger app, creating a lot of text doesn't make sense. You have to few means to control the readability. So adding images will be what you'll do most using this app.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The first button allows you to take a snap and insert that right away in the text. Here's the boring view from my train seat. </div><br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><img heigth="580" src="http://lh4.ggpht.com/_C0PnWJwDRZY/TXXPiRD12cI/AAAAAAAAAiQ/h849vxo6RXQ/1299518874008.png" /></div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">After you'be taken the picture the screen goes black for about a second or two. What the app does in that moment isn't clear. I would guess uploading the image. The second image button allows you to pick a picture from you Android's media gallery. Again, after selecting the image the app gets sluggish for a second or so.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The pictures you add will appear next to the buttons, and not in the text. This way you don't know where your pictures will appear in your text. And since there is no preview feature I have no clue while writing this where the picture of my metro ride will appear. Not really very user friendly.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Just below the picture bar there is a line to type your tags. Unfortunately you will have to remember your usual tags as the app doesn't seem to know my tag list. Again, a bit annoying as I'd rather keep my tag list nice and clean.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">And finally just above the publish/save buttons, there is a line which allows you to geotag your post. Since you can only add one single location, this seems to indicate you aren't supposed to write long posts, meaning if you are writing on this Blogger app for over two hours on a high speed train, your location changes regularly, which isn't supported. </div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">All in all I must say I'm not overly impressed with this app. It is hardly a step up from the <a href="http://www.blogger.com/tour_pst.g">SMS/MMS and email posting</a> that has been available for years. Sure I can tag and geo-tag my posts now, but what extra functionaries are there. In general it stems Blogger keeps lagging behind on other blog software and services, also in the mobile field. Hopefully getting a first version on the market, will be the beginning of some rapid improvements. The feedback form included in the app would seems to indicate Google wants listen to the users. I really hope they make something of this app.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">PS: While walking past the tram stop close to my place, I noticed the light boards indicating the position and ETA of the trams finally became operational. Those board have been hanging there for over a year without lighting up (except for a short period where they showed the hour). Let us pray there is no analogy with Mobile Blogger.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://lh5.ggpht.com/_C0PnWJwDRZY/TXXPjfJe4UI/AAAAAAAAAiU/Xg20uJHbiOs/IMAG1052.png" width="580" /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><u>Editing done afterwards:</u></b></div>The following editing of the text has been done using the standard Blogger interface.<br />
<ul><li>All pictures which are added using Mobile Blogger appear at the bottom of your post. I move all images to the right place in the text, resized them and centered them.</li>
<li>I changed the appearance of all the text to 'justify' and added a blank line between all paragraphs as the text wasn't really readable otherwise.</li>
<li>I put in the wrong label, so I updated that.</li>
<li>I've added some links to the text. I didn't figure out whether that could be done using the app.</li>
</ul><div><b><u>Conclusion:</u></b></div><div>As the app is today, I don't suggest using it for any serious mobile blogging. It is good to quickly upload a picture with some text and geo-tag it. Beyond that, the app will just let you down.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com