Open Source

[admin]

There are a number of open source BI efforts and an increasing number of open source components being added to commercial BI Platforms like Cognos. This thread discusses all these issues.

[admin]

Eclipse set for coordinated release of 23 updates Ganymede release of 18 million lines of code includes new provisioning and security tools

Heather Havenstein (Computerworld) 25 June, 2008 08:38:49

The Eclipse Foundation is set to make available tomorrow its annual coordinated release of open source projects, which this year includes some 18 million lines of code and updates to 23 different projects.

The new Ganymede release includes a provisioning system called p2, new security features, new modeling tools and tools for creating service-oriented architectures, said Mike Milinkovich, executive director of the Eclipse Foundation. This release marks the fifth major project update Eclipse has made in June, which have been coordinated releases since June 2006.

"We think it's very important that we continue to be predictable and hit our dates," he added. "It's a big enabler for our ecosystem. Because there are so many Eclipse projects now and most end users and commercial adopters use many different Eclipse projects, by aligning and shipping them all on the same day it is a lot easier for them to pick them up."

The new p2 provisioning aims to make it easier for open source developers to install and update Eclipse and the new security features.

The security updates in Ganymede provide preferences-like storage for sensitive data like passwords and login credentials, along with Java encryption mechanisms, Eclipse said. The update also adds support for the Java authentication service in Eclipse's Equinox OSGI framework.

Ganymede also includes the Rich Ajax Platform (RAP) 1.1 release, which makes it easier for developers to build scalable, modular Web applications running on Equinox. New features of RAP 1.1 include the ability to customize the look and feel of applications with presentation factories and cascading style sheets, and to store application state information on a per user basis, according to Eclipse.

The JavaScript IDE in Ganymede is updated to include new features like code completion, quick fix, formatting and validations. The Eclipse open source Business Intelligence Reporting Tool (BIRT) adds an updated JavaScript editor and a new JavaScript debugger for debugging report event handlers.

For SOA developers, the coordinated release includes a new Service Component Architecture (SCA) Designer tool that will provide a graphical interface for developers who want to create composite applications using the SCA 1.0 standard. A new policy editor is aimed at making it easier for developers to build and manipulate XML expressions that conform to the WS-Policy W3C standard.

[Steve Bennett]

August 20, 2008

Banking and Telecom solutions from Frog Analytics, SITAR and Greenplum Joint Venture

By Nathesh, TMCnet Contributing Editor

Frog Analytics, SITAR Technologies and Greenplum have entered into a partnership to offer preconfigured solutions for banking and telecom companies. The solutions are for speeding up of Data Warehouse adoption of companies and their decision taking time on revenue growth.

The "Data Warehouse Accelerator" incorporating Frog Analytics Business Value Configurators (BVCs) is state to be a complete business intelligence and customer contact management solution based on a new conceptual framework for delivering and implementing data driven applications with embedded business IP.

Frog Analytics is a company integrating extensive business IP into pre-built software solutions and it provides its clients with software, business processes and templates that inject and enable their data driven projects with the vital business IP achieved within the fastest timeframe at the lowest cost.

Sitar Technologies is a BI/DW technology consulting and technical resource company which deals in delivering "Lowest cost" Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing outcomes by deploying technology components across the total BI, Data Warehousing and Analytics market.

Greenplum is a data warehouse database company that develops database software for business intelligence.

"Banks and telcos in Australia and throughout Asia are recognizing the value of their data and are looking for fast, efficient ways to create business value from large-scale data analytics," said Fernando Ricardo, CEO of Frog Analytics. "Frog Analytics understands how to accelerate time-to-production by delivering pre-configured solutions for major markets, built on high-performance software and hardware such as Greenplum Database and supported by extensive business expertise."

Bank and Telecom companies would take a lot of time, sometimes years in order to complete a data warehouse product. Data Warehouse Accelerator and BVCs solution is claimed to be a hardware/software combo that fastens that time required by companies. A Frog Analytics BVCs include relevant business content, code, business process information, logical and physical data models, pre-built business dashboards, marketing campaigns, campaign management framework and processes, scripts, creative designs and leadership methods.

SITAR states that even when companies put forth strategies to finish projects with help of data warehouse configuration experts they end up late because of the prevailing lack of expertise in massively parallel data warehouses. This partnership will help their clients in their go-to-market efforts.

For example if a bank wants to implement a Private Banking campaign management initiative to increase credit card use, Frog Analytics provides a Data Warehouse Accelerator and BVC for Credit Card Use. Once the BVC is loaded, the customer's reference architecture is configured with campaign plans, sales staff scripts, events, behavioral models, t SQL and l CRM configuration code.

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[Jo Vincent]

Infobright Introduces Open Source Analytic Data Warehouse

9/17/2008

By Stephen Swoyer

The data warehousing market is crowded with established players, appliance upstarts, and data warehousing pure-plays. Add to that growing interest in open source options.

Infobright Inc. week trumpeted a couple of coups. First, it has released its open source BrightHouse analytic data warehouse (DW) -- Infobright Community Edition (ICE) -- and a venture capital investment from MySQL steward Sun Microsystems Inc. Infobright spins ICE as a mostly unfettered version of Brighthouse that scales to support implementations between 500 GB and 30 TB. It includes most of the amenities of Brighthouse Enterprise Edition -- including a massively parallel processing (MPP) capability --but is missing that product's accelerated loading and insert update features.

ICE is no gimmick. Infobright is making all of the source code for its Brighthouse DW implementation -- which officials say actually comprises a kind of commingling of Brighthouse with the MySQL RDBMS (it's not just a layer on top of MySQL) -- available via ICE. Officials also released testimonials from commercial open source vendors, including MySQL, JasperSoft, and Pentaho.

The news is propitiously timed. Several of Infobright's competitors recently trumpeted attention-grabbing news of their own. This week, for example, DW appliance pioneer Netezza inc. announced the availability of new geospatial capabilities for its NPS systems, and Kognitio -- another DW trailblazer -- signed a deal with data mining specialist KXEN Inc.

Why open source now? Infobright CEO Miriam Tuerk says her company's business plan always included an open source component. "It's been percolating all along. The decision to launch [Brighthouse] as a Community Edition was always on our radar, but it is a very naked process. There is no hiding under a rock. We felt that it was important that with dozens of different entrants offering capabilities in the marketplace that we really have a few solid customers and a solid track record before we announced [an open source version of our software]," she comments.

Tuerk dismisses talk that Infobright's adoption of open source is linked to (or a condition of) Sun's move to take an equity stake in the firm. "That was not a condition of their [Sun's] decision," she says, stressing that Infobright had been working toward such an end "for a while" and that the timing "just sort of worked out."

The Open Source Move

A veteran industry watcher who spoke on condition of anonymity sees Infobright's open source move as an about-face of sorts.

"I remember them saying they … weren't going to be open source themselves because there was no reason to open up all [of] their core [intellectual property]," observes the analyst who is familiar with the open source BI landscape. "[It] sounds like maybe the crowded market got to them and they're hoping to use this to get broad adoption in MySQL houses and convert them to paying customers the same way MySQL did, or angle for an acquisition by Sun."

Martin Mickos, a MySQL veteran and a senior vice-president with Sun's Database Group, says the decision to take an equity stake in Infobright was -- more than anything else -- just a "great" investment opportunity.

"We make investments where we think it makes great sense. [MySQL had] been partnering with Infobright already when we got acquired by Sun. We always had a very active partnering program," Mickos comments.

"Why did we invest now in Infobright? It goes back to the notion that we find this an interesting space of the market. From Sun's perspective, data warehousing requires storage, data warehousing requires servers, and, of course, data warehousing is very database-dependent, so Infobright seemed like a great investment."

Mickos dismisses the idea that Sun's equity stake is, in fact, a prelude to an eventual acquisition overture.

"Overall, when you look at the data warehousing market … you'll see a market for large data warehouses of about 1 TB to about 30 TB, and that's where we work with Infobright, but we're not exclusive. At the greater-than-30-TB range, that's where we work with GreenPlum," he says. "We want all of our partners to succeed, and there's no exclusivity. We just found that Infobright was a very interesting company to make an investment with and to work closely with."

Breaking the ICE

Much like open source ETL specialist Talend Inc. -- which markets an "Open Studio" edition of its ETL software -- Infobright positions ICE as a quick-and-dirty option for database administrators who need to solve one-off problems.

"The community edition is really targeted to be this sort of toolkit that a DBA can just go and get [up and running] in five minutes," Tuerk explains, "so it's really a toolkit that lets [DBAs] do one-off analytics, testing, or other tasks. Our intention is to provide a fast, easy way to do the one-off analytics that [DBAs are] getting asked to do by the business every day. The DBA of today is having to create new indexes, build a data mart, build out a cube -- things like that."

Conversely, Infobright pitches Brighthouse Enterprise as an option for customers who want to build out a scalable data warehouse infrastructure.

"Customers will come to buy the Enterprise package for many reasons. Many companies get that you still have to buy support and get support and service from a vendor, even when you're using a Community Edition. Anyone in the community will tell you that open source doesn't mean that it's free. It just depends on where you want to put your costs," she points out.

Tuerk also touts Brighthouse Enterprise's faster loading times (it's approximately twice as fast as ICE) and Insert Update support.

Stephen Swoyer is a technology writer based in Athens, Ga. You can contact Stephen via e-mail at stephen.swoyer@spinkle.net.

[Doug Heywood]

How many more open source initiatives are there? I'm finding it difficult to keep in touch.

GuidesBluenog wraps BI, portal and CMS for midmarket

Startup vendor Bluenog is aiming at mid-market companies with a new portal, business intelligence and content management suite.

Chris Kanaracus (IDG News Service) 16/09/2008 07:55:00

Bluenog released an application suite on Monday that bundles portal software along with content management and BI (business intelligence).

Bluenog ICE, which leverages a number of open-source projects, is aimed at companies that don't want or can't afford to deal with buying each type of technology separately and then integrating them, said CEO Suresh Kuppusamy.

The combined suite gives smaller customers "one vendor for all issues," he added. "At the end of the day, they get one throat to choke."

Before founding the Piscataway, New Jersey, startup, Kuppusamy was solutions architect for the Eastern Region at the application server and portal giant BEA, now owned by Oracle. Co-founders Scott Barnett and Sastry Taruvai also worked at BEA.

"We totally know the space and what it takes to build enterprise applications," Kuppusamy said.

Supported platforms include Windows, Linux, Solaris and Mac OS. Compatible application servers include JBoss, Apache Tomcat, WebLogic and Glassfish. Database support includes DB/2, MySQL, Oracle and PostgreSQL.

Bluenog does not profess to provide advanced BI analytics within ICE. Instead, it focuses on enabling business users to quickly and easily generate reports.

Columbia University's Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) is not using the full ICE suite, but is about to sign a deal for the CMS component, said Sri Vinay, associate director of IT for the center.

CIESIN, which hosts thousands of Web pages and is also building new sites, spent about a year evaluating several CMS options but ultimately chose Bluenog because unlike other products they tested, its architecture doesn't tightly couple the interface to the document repository, according to Vinay.

"In the future, if you had to use some other front-end code, you can still pull [data] from their repository," he said.

CIESIN, which has about 50 employees and a roughly 12-member IT team, was also looking to find something workable within fairly tight budget constraints, but didn't go with a noncommercial open-source project because they wanted a vendor to hold accountable, he said.

Bluenog ICE is priced at US$25,000 per server per year and is available globally. Round-the-clock support is also available.

[Jo Vincent]

Hey CORTEX - check out the new open source thread here.