Saturday, 5 December 2009

Pentaho Reporting - Reporting heaven

A few years ago we checked out Pentaho version 2 and it was looking a pretty cool product - actually suite of products.
As things happen the real demand for a change in reporting attitude has only happened more recently. And here I am implementing Pentaho BI Server 3.5.
The more I look at this, the more I like it, if at all possible!

Pentaho has made the switch from default JBoss installation to default Tomcat.
I can understand why as Tomcat is much easier to set up basically due to less complexity.
As an out and out JBoss follower I had the fun of getting the manual installation working. Now the problem with the opensource community flavour is that you have to hunt for the documentation. No doubt the Enterprise flavour comes with it all indexed clearly in one place!

I have turned to two books to assist.

Pentaho Solutions - Roland Bouman/Jos van Dongen - Great book for an overall in-depth guide to using the Pentaho suite! Excellent installation guide. However now that I want to focus on the Reporting I find I need even more detail hence the next book I have on order:

Pentaho Reporting 3.5 for Java Developers - this one should arrive at my door tomorrow but from the glossary this will provide the detailed guide I need for using the Reporting tools. Can't wait for it to arrive.

I've also invested in the Pentaho Community Dashboard Framework (CDF) tutorial and that is looking good.
Only just started the tutorial but the CDF has much promise!

Anyway, our users are getting excited by what they see on the BI server. I better get converting some of those horrible extremely heavy Excel pivot tables!

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