Open Source Business Intelligence Platforms for Engineering Education

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1 Open Source Business Intelligence Platforms for Engineering Education Jorge Bernardino ISEC Polytechnic of Coimbra Rua Pedro Nunes Coimbra ABSTRACT Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are critical to improve the competitiveness of European education and industry and to meet the demands of its society and economy. In this paper we describe and evaluated the six major open source platforms for Business Intelligence: JasperSoft, OpenI, Palo, Pentaho, SpagoBI and Vanilla. With those open source platforms, computer science master students can test and modify the software, simulating real enterprise environments and improving their competences. Therefore, we show which are the best free solutions available to exploit by higher education institutions (HEI) in order to enhance engineering education using new open source technologies. Keywords Open Source Technologies, Business Intelligence Platforms, Enhancing Engineering Education. 1. INTRODUCTION Information and Communication Technologies have a catalytic impact in productivity and innovation, by facilitating creativity and management; modernization of public services, such as health, education and transport; advances in science and technology, by supporting cooperation and access to information. Higher education institutions are at the heart of innovation and they play a vital role with their capacities to generate new ideas and transform these into business assets. Business Intelligence (BI) is a broad category of applications and technologies for gathering, storing, analyzing, and providing access to data to help organizations make better business decisions [10]. One of most complete definitions of the business intelligence can be found on the IBM web-site: Business intelligence is the gathering, managing, analyzing and sharing of information in order to gain insights that can be used to make better decisions. Business intelligence turns information into intelligence, intelligence into knowledge, and knowledge into business wisdom. WEE2011, September 27-30, 2011, Lisbon, Portugal. Editors: Jorge Bernardino and José Carlos Quadrado. Combining advanced techniques such as data warehousing, data mining, and decision support, business intelligence systems offer the ability to transform information into powerful customer relationship management systems that can help create stronger, more profitable relationships, identify new business opportunities even anticipate customer demands, cited in [3]. In this paper we are interested in open source software as been defined by Open Source Initiative [7]: software that is freely distributed without any fees related to use and including the source code; amended software including all modifications in the software source code must be made available under the original license. Although the use of the open source software does not have to involve license costs, the cost of use of any software should be always expressed by sum of all cost related to software implementation, configuration, maintenance and support. Besides the zero licenses cost, open source software has the following qualities: reliability, customizability, freedom of choice, support and scalability. This study only analyzed open source tools, free of charge, given that one of the main objectives is to reduce costs and enhance engineering education using new open source technologies. We evaluated and compared the six major Open Source Business Intelligence tools: JasperSoft [4], OpenI [6], Palo [8], Pentaho [9], SpagoBI [12], and Vanilla [13]. These ideas can be directly applied to Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing subjects of the master degree in Computer Science of ISEC (Instituto Superior de Engenharia de Coimbra). In the educational environment, the students can work individually or in groups of 2-4 students. The paper is organized as follows. Section 2 describes some benefits of using open source software. In Section 3, we give a synopsis of the six open source business intelligence platforms. Section 4 describes the platforms evaluation. Finally the concluding remarks are presented in Section FREE AND OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE The increasing focus on open-source software has reached the mainstream business intelligence market. As some organizations are looking to reduce costs in their large Business Intelligence (BI) deployments, they are hoping that open source gives them greater leverage for their money. Application developers that are looking for a way to embed BI functionality into their applications initiate other open-source BI deployments. Similarly, organizations often cannot afford to roll out BI technology to hundreds or maybe thousands of users, even from their preferred vendor, because of steep licensing costs and are therefore 693

2 considering an open-source solution to complement the current infrastructure. Evaluating open source BI is not cost-free, even though the software is freely available for download, and the labor costs should be dramatically lower. This is because the evaluation of open source BI is more likely to be bottom up rather than top down. This means that the technical evaluation and even a pilot implementation may occur at minimal cost and effort before executives are involved. One of the biggest problems with commercial solutions is that all the costs are born upfront by the customer before there is any reward. This dynamic is one of the key reasons for the growth and popularity of the open source movement. While open source is evangelized on many fronts, including security, flexibility, and competitive advantage, organizations adopt open source primarily because of the price/performance ratio. With open source BI, organizations can adjust spending as they go, depending on the perceived returns. Almost all of the investment is spent configuring or customizing the solution to meet the organization s needs, not on a generic system that needs to be customized just to work. Open Source Software/Free Software (OSS/FS) (also abbreviated as FLOSS Free and Libre Open Source Software) has risen to immense notoriety. Briefly, FLOSS programs are those whose license allows the user to run and modify the program at will, including the right to redistribute copies of both the original and the modified versions. This kind of license usually requires that copyright notices are maintained but doesn t require royalty payments [2]. There are a multitude of FLOSS licenses, with varying degrees of openness or freedom, but all those licenses give open source software the possibility of being freely downloaded and used for any purpose that the user wishes, even if the developers never intended or predicted such uses. Redistribution, modification and unrestricted access to source code are also some possibilities present in every FLOSS license. Nowadays, if an organization has the needed skills to implement, use and maintain the desired application, there are almost certainly one or two options of enterprise-class open source software. Some common benefits associated with open source software include: Short Product Cycle: Software evolves most quickly when there are no restrictions to what programmers are allowed to do with the source code for a piece of software. If programmers can read, modify and redistribute software at will, and more users are allowed to try that software, improvements, bug corrections and general feature adoption tend to happen faster. This effect is sometimes called Linus' Law and usually postulated as Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow [11]. The short product cycle and the fact that this software doesn't have license costs allows users to test and try new versions, and give feedback to developers more quickly than with traditional commercial software. Reliable and Secure: By giving access to source code to anyone, the chances that a security flaw is exposed increase, and that flaws can't be easily covered up and made secret. Fixes are also more easily obtained because we don t need to wait for an official release or such mechanism common in proprietary software. Anybody with the proper knowledge can devise a fix and patch the software. Freedom from Vendor Lock-In: Free and open source licenses, by their very nature, turns vendor lock-in in a non-issue. Allowing everyone to review the source code, assures the user that if some vendor vanishes other people can follow the work. No Sales or License Costs: There are no costs, regarding software licensing, allowing users to evaluate the software nearly for free. If organizations have internal knowledge they can achieve a nearly cost-free implementation of the desired software. If an organization needs to contract external services, their budget is not impacted by software acquisition costs, typical of commercial applications. Thus, the money saved can be invested in other services, like training, hardware or other business requests. While Linux, Apache, MySQL, and other open source software are routinely deployed in organizations, open source BI solutions are just at the point where they are sufficient mature to satisfy user requirements. The major attraction of open source is to save time and money, but there s an extra dimension to open source BI open source BI allows interaction and evolution in a way that proprietary BI does not. These are all good reasons to use open source BI in higher education institutions (HEI). 3. OPEN SOURCE BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE TOOLS The value of BI for business is predominantly expressed in the fact that such systems cast some light on information that may serve as the basis for carrying out fundamental changes in a particular organization, i.e. establishing new co-operation, acquiring new customers, creating new markets, offering products to customers [5]. BI platforms include ad hoc query, report writing, decision support systems, executive information systems (for example KPI - Key Performance Indicators) and techniques such as statistical analysis and Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) [1]. Our work stems from the need to reduce costs in higher education institutions offering: a survey of BI solutions on the market without costs, possibility for the students to test and modify the software, simulating real enterprise environments, ability to structure and improve support decision making, increased ability to compete with other organizations. We evaluated and compared six Open Source Business Intelligence tools: JasperSoft, OpenI, Palo, Pentaho, SpagoBI and Vanilla. 3.1 Jaspersoft ( Jaspersoft was originally called Panscopic, and was founded in 2001 [4]. This is an open tool source developed in Perl and Java, with a license GNU GPL. The Jaspersoft Business Intelligence Suite is a comprehensive Business Intelligence (BI) suite that provides robust reporting, report server, data analysis, and data integration. The JasperSoft reporting products have become the cornerstone of many mission critical application solutions in major market segments such as financial, retail and manufacturing, providing on-demand and real-time information delivery for critical applications such as auditing and reporting, 694

3 customer self-service, compliance management and systems performance and tuning management. Jaspersoft provides this software on a commercial open source software basis, and now has upwards of 12,000 customers. It now claims to be the mostly-widely deployed BI vendor. As a commercial open source software vendor, Jaspersoft's software benefits from continual development from its active community. In Figure 1 is shown an example of an analytic report. 3.3 Palo ( Palo Analyzer is a web application with which we can load and visualize the data with the underlying structures from the Palo Server in an intuitive way [8]. Users are quickly able to create a web-based reporting, and to publish the reports. In doing so they can perform ad hoc analysis, create planning reports or analyze standard reports without the help of IT specialists. Dimensions can be arbitrarily arranged ("Slice + Dice") and nested ("Drill Down") to discover irregularities and causes, trends and patterns in the data. The user right management in Palo Analyzer provides the user a secure saving and publishing of their reports. The Palo Analyzer requires no installation of further software on the client. A server-side installation of a Tomcat application server is required. An example of a Palo report is illustrated in Figure 3. Figure 1. A Sample JasperAnalysis Analytic Report. 3.2 OpenI (openi.org) OpenI is a web-based OLAP reporting application [6]. Based on Java EE, OpenI is an out-of-box solution for building and publishing reports from XMLA-compliant OLAP data sources such as Microsoft Analysis Services or Mondrian. OpenI is available in two versions: Community, which owns part of the features of the tool and that is free and the Enterprise that contains all the features available for the solution, but is a paid version. The application offers a range of BI applications: charting, Pivot table creation, reporting, OLAP and Data Mining processes (see Figure 2). Figure 3. Palo Analyzer. Figure 2. OpenI report. 3.4 Pentaho ( The Pentaho Open BI Suite is a process-centric, solution-oriented platform with BI components that enable to develop complete solutions to BI problems [9]. The Pentaho BI Platform, the core architecture and foundation of the Pentaho Open BI Suite, is process centric because the central controller is a workflow engine. The workflow engine uses process definitions to define the business intelligence processes that execute within the BI Platform. The processes can be easily customized and new processes can be added. The BI platform includes components and reports for analyzing the performance of these processes. The BI platform is solution-oriented because the operations of the platform are specified in process definitions and action documents that specify every activity. These processes and operations collectively define the solution to a business intelligence problem. This BI solution can be easily integrated into business processes that are external to the platform. The definition of a solution can contain any number of processes and operations. 695

4 The Pentaho BI platform provides the architecture and infrastructure required to build solutions to business intelligence problems. The framework provides core services including authentication, logging, auditing, web services, and rules engines. The platform also includes a solution engine that integrates reporting, analysis, dashboards and data mining components (see Figure 4). The most well known implementation of the BI Platform is the Pentaho BI Server which functions as a web based report management system, application integration server and lightweight workflow engine (action sequences). It is designed to be easily integrated into any business processes. The Community Edition is self supported open source software. The Enterprise Edition (EE) of the Pentaho BI platform is available as part of the Pentaho BI Suite EE which includes technical support, managed upgrades and enterprise features. SpagoBI offers a graph visualization engine, in SWF format, allowing to display KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) for realtime graphical performance views (see Figure 5). Figure 5. SpagoBI sample dashboards. Figure 4. Pentaho sample report. 3.5 SpagoBI ( The SpagoBI history began in 2001, along with the necessity of the Architectures and Consulting Unit of Engineering Ingegneria Informatica (at that time called Engiweb.com) to realize a Java Enterprise framework in order to develop some internal projects [12]. At the end of 2004, this framework was re-engineered and released in open source, as Spago Framework, at first on SourceForge. In 2005 SpagoBI project was released and the solutions were transferred onto the forge of ObjectWeb Consortium. In 2006 SpagoWorld Initiative was launched, starting from the new website, and the transformation of the ObjectWeb Consortium into OW2 began. In 2007 two more projects, Spagic and Spago4Q, were released. SpagoWorld is a Free (Libre) Open Source Initiative, founded and managed by Engineering. The Initiative is composed of SpagoBI: the unified free/open source platform for the development of Business Intelligence solutions in an integrated and flexible environment. SpagoBI is released under the GNU LGPL licence, no "professional" or "enterprise" version against payment of fees. SpagoWorld projects integrate already existing components and develop new modules upon the specific integration platform approach, in order to realize solutions, which are suitable to the users' needs. SpagoBI allows the multidimensional analysis through OLAP engines, which are more flexible and user-friendly, compared to structured reports. SpagoBI integrates the following OLAP engines: JPivot/Mondrian, JPalo/Mondrian, JPivot/XMLA Server. 3.6 Vanilla (vanilla-bi.com) Vanilla is a True Open Source BI Platform sponsored by BPM- Conseil [13]. Vanilla is a fully integrated suite of Business Intelligence software that allows to integrate and analyze enterprise data for improved decision making and business performance. It is an end-to-end BI platform that leverage metadata across all modules for ease of use, development, and maintenance. Vanilla lowers the total cost of ownership, development and deployment of DW/BI applications. Vanilla provides a complete set of development modules: BI Metadata Designer, OLAP Schema Designer, BI Dashboard Designer, BI Workflow Designer, KPI Metrics Designer, KPI Maps Designer and Report Designer Plugins for ireport and BIRT. Figure 6 illustrates a sample report of Vanilla. Figure 6. Vanilla sample report. 4. EVALUATION OF OPEN SOURCE BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE TOOLS We tested the public available demos, which can be downloaded through each platform website in JasperSoft [4], OpenI [6], Palo [8], Pentaho [9], SpagoBI [12], and Vanilla [13]. Table 1 illustrates the properties of the tools in analysis with its main features. 696

5 JasperSoft OpenI Palo Pentaho SpagoBI Vanilla Reports Table 1. Open Source Business Intelligence Platforms Features Features Open Source Business Intelligence and Pentaho is still more balanced analysis tools because it allows ad hoc queries and managing location GEO/GIS. The Palo tool does not support data mining processes, KPIs and tracking features GEO/GIS. Palo enables ad-hoc queries, which are a plus for this tool. Palo has a relevant factor in the fact that you can add to Microsoft Excel and Open Office Calc. The Vanilla tool is comparable to Pentaho package with similar features available. An important point to note is that the Vanilla tool has a version for mobile devices, a factor that opens up important perspectives for future functionalities in open source BI. Jaspersoft is the only open source BI platform developed in Java and Perl. Vanilla is developed in PHP language and the remainders are implemented in Java. Graphics Dashboards OLAP ETL Data Mining KPI Data export GEO/GIS Ad-hoc queries GNU GPL Licence Only Free version Linux Windows Unix Java Licences Operating System Programming Languages 5. CONCLUSIONS After several years in existence, Open Source Business Intelligence platforms are mature from the functional and business model point of view to become a solid option to meet and exceed the business intelligence needs of an organization. A mature set of open source solutions exists that includes most areas of business intelligence functionality, with a common list of characteristics: The product is offered in an open source format (open source licensing and source code is available). A credible community exists that exerts extensive effort to be involved in the development of the product (some areas include bug detection, forums, documentation, source code and common licensing). Open source technology has evolved to now provide the same level of trust and comfort as traditional software does for enterprise adopters (in the areas of software maintenance, training, consulting, etc) with the establishment and growth of successful vendor companies to support the software. From our analysis, we conclude that the Open Source Business Intelligence platforms are growing both in features, quality and visual appeal. Of the six tools reviewed, OpenI is arguably the least developed and Pentaho, JasperSoft and SpagoBI tools are those with the greatest potential for exploit by higher education institutions. With those open source platforms, computer science master students can test and modify the software, simulating real enterprise environments and improving their competences, for example proposing new modules. Perl PHP The first conclusion drawn from this study is that the SpagoBI tool is one of BI packages more complete and where the Community version, which is the only one, contains more features than most of the Enterprise versions of the remaining packages BI solutions analyzed. The OpenI tool has a weak point the lack of proper methods of ETL and the inability to export data, it is therefore a most rudimentary tool when compared to SpagoBI. Pentaho is a fairly comprehensive and consistent tool together with SpagoBI. JasperSoft is a powerful BI tool, lacks only the process of Data Mining and KPIs when compared with SpagoBI 6. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Our thanks to our master students, that helping to improve our knowledge in open source software. 7. REFERENCES [1] Chaudhary, S. Management factors for strategic BI success. In Business intelligence in digital economy. Opportunities, limitations and risks. IDEA Group Publishing, 2004 [2] Cossentino M. (2007) Open Source Software, October, %20Open%20Source%20Software.pdf 697

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