Free Database Roundup

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Ruby for BI and DW

Ruby is gaining ground as a programming language, but is far from the most popular choice, especially in the corporate consulting world. However, it has a loyal following for a reason: hackability. It is open source, supported by a dedicated developer community, and it requires little overhead to do powerful things. When resources are tight and time is constrained, a hackable solution has great appeal. It is also great for building prototypes, for prototypes that could end up as production code (think Visual Basic), or for applications that will require frequent changes. Many popular web applications (Basecamp, for example) are built with Ruby, which speaks to both the power and robustness of the language, the libraries and the Ruby on Rails framework.

I came across this blog post which suggests a three Ruby based tools for data warehousing and reporting:

• ActiveWarehouse - Based on the Ruby on Rails framework, ActiveWarehouse simplifies creating the data warehouse dimension and fact tables.
• ActiveWarehouse ETL - The ETL component of ActiveWarehouse that loads the data.
• Ruport - A collection of Ruby tools to facilitate building reports.

I don’t know how maintainable a Ruby DW/BI solution is, but it would be worthy of consideration if you need a cheap and hackable custom solution (and you like hacking Ruby, of course). I would certainly want to build the business rules in the database (probably a good practice anyways), with stored procedures and views, so that if another BI solution was introduced, either as a replacement or as a complement, you would not have to start again from scratch.

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What to do when you have no budget

What do you do when you need software, but you do not have the budget yet, nor the time to deal with the procurement office? Have a look at Open Source Living. Contrary to open source repositories, like Source Forge or Google code, this is a directory open source software, organized into some broad categories. It is no where near comprehensive: some categories only have a couple of listings. You will not find code libraries or obscure applications, but rather open source counterparts to many commercial applications. The projects seem to be chosen for listing based on popularity, and the licenses vary. If the software is going to become widely used in your organization, be sure to apply some criteria when making a selection.

Of course, it might not be a limited budget that draws you here, but a desire to leverage some of the benefits of open source software.

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Improving the usability of Pentaho BI

A common concern with open source projects, and BI open source in particular, is the usability of the software. For both end users and administrators, this can be a key factor in adoption.

For Pentaho Business Intelligence, the Mantle project is underway to put an AJAX front end onto Pentaho. The project leverages Google Web Toolkit . A brief review with some screenshots can be found here. While still very early stage, it demonstrates the WEB 2.0 direction that the Pentaho team is thinking about. It also points the way for Pentaho OEM partners who want to put a prettier face on open source business intelligence.

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Building an ETL tool: how hard can it be?

After my post on buying or building an ETL tool, I searched around a bit for some counterpoints. guercheLE, via Twitter, pointed me to Oren Eini . On his blog he has documented his experience building an ETL tool, which was released as Rhino ETL. The series of posts is great reading for both understanding how ETL works and for insight into the evolution of an open source project.

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The Future of Enterprise Apps: Google App Engine

Yesterday Google launched the Google App Engine, a service that lets developers deploy web applications using Google’s infrastructure. This is Google’s foray into cloud computing, and the service competes directly with Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2).
Why is this the future? Because developers no longer have to be as concerned with the infrastructure that supports the application. This is a huge step forward, as their focus can be on the application and business logic, rather than coding around potential network problems or other performance issues.
Certainly it will be some time before this model is widely adopted, as the current services have some severe limitations. For example, Google only supports Python, Amazon EC2 is Linux based. However, as the services mature, they will become the next logical steps for enterprise software developers looking to capitalize on the advantages of the software as a service (SaaS) or utility computing model.

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What makes an open source project ready for business?

A cursory search on Sourceforge, Google Code or Freshmeat will turn up a number of interesting open source products in almost every imaginable category. But which ones are worth investigating for use inside the enterprise? Here are five keys to separating the wheat from the chaff:

1. There have been recent additions to the code base and there are developers active on the project. The best evidence is a blog, wiki or a website devoted to the project. Look for recent and regular posts and links to download recent patches.
2. The code is written in a mainstream language. Look for Java, C++, PHP, Perl, Ruby or anything else that has been widely adopted. Projects written in D, Gambas, or Erlang will have a harder time recruiting developers, and future support of the project could be problematic. While the fringe languages have many advantages in their respective niches, the more established languages have quality libraries and well documented APIs. This will not directly impact the business users, but it can help avoid a technology dead end.
3. Transparent licensing. Open source FUD loves to focus on licensing issues. Be wary of obscure licenses and stick to projects that are using one of the more common ones such as GNU GPL, BSD or MPL.
4. A commercially supported version is available. This is the most telling sign that an open source project is ready for business use. The vendor will provide testing, training, documentation and control over the code base. They will also be working hard to build a community of users, developers and partners who will support and further enhance the product. Check also for 3rd party add-ons, which is a sign that the product is maturing well. The most well known example of commercial open source is Red Hat Linux.
5. Some marquee customers have signed on. Search around to see if large customers have made public their use of the open source project or the commercial counterpart. The large volume of users will have weeded out the most common bugs, and they might be sponsoring (or pressuring the vendor) for industry specific enhancements.

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More Funding for Open Source BI

A post on the BI for business people blog comments on the recent round of funding for Pentaho, an U.S. based open source BI vendor. Pentaho offers a full featured business intelligence suite, and they have positioned themselves as a competitor against Cognos, Business Objects, Hyperion and Microsoft. However, in a head to head competition, I don’t think Pentaho is a winner. They can offer lower upfront licensing costs, but this is offset with the risk of an increased total cost of ownership.
I think where Pentaho, and other open source BI vendors, will gain market share is in the following situations:

• In the SMB space, where cost is an issue and BI deployments are less complex.
• As a development platform for managed or hosted service providers.
• For ISVs looking to embed a full featured reporting or OLAP solution into their product.
• Where heavy customization is required.
• Where interoperability with other systems is complicated.

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