Creating dashboards; and, using metadata models when creating analyzer reports.

[ruakh]

Hi,

We're very new to Pentaho -- we're just trying it out now because of the Hadoop support (we're considering using it with a product of ours that stores data in a Hive warehouse) -- so these questions may be a bit clueless, sorry. Also, they're not directly related to the Hadoop integration, but this forum's sticky post says this is the place to "[...] Troubleshoot issues you have in trying to test the new Hadoop features", which I think includes this. Please let me know if these should go in a different forum.

1. First issue: We can't figure out how to create a dashboard. In our evaluation copy of the 3.6 Windows version, the main screen of the User Console has a big "New Dashboard" button, and various menu options lead there as well; but in the 3.7 Linux Hadoop beta, there's none of that. Does that require a plugin? If so, how do we install it?

2. Second issue: One of my co-workers figured out how to create and publish a metadata model, but we can't get it show up as a data source in the "New Analyzer Report" screen. It shows up just fine in the "New Report" screen, just not the "New Analyzer Report" screen. Thinking it might be a caching issue, we restarted Tomcat and tried each of the menu options under "Tools > Refresh"; but, no effect. What are we missing?

Sorry if those questions don't make much sense. Please let me know if you need any screenshots or anything for clarification.

Thanks in advance!

Sincerely,
Ran Ari-Gur

[cboyden]

Hello Ran Ari-Gur!

Welcome to Pentaho. :)

1.) The Dashboard is an EE feature and 30-day trial licenses are installed automatically on Windows. Unfortunately Linux does not have trial licenses at this time. You may contact Jake if you need a license with which to test during the beta program. Jake can be reached at jake@pentaho.com. (Please note that the Analyzer is an EE plugin as well and that without a license it reverts to JPivot (http://jpivot.sourceforge.net/index.html) for OLAP analysis)

2.) The Analyzer and JPivot require a "Mondrian schema (http://mondrian.pentaho.com/documentation/schema.php#What_is_a_schema)", which is different from a "Metadata Model (http://community.pentaho.com/faq/pentaho_metadata.php)". The Metadata Model describes data from various sources while the Mondrian Schema describes an OLAP cube (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OLAP_cube).
Using PDI-EE (With Agile-BI) you can load your Metadata Model (*.xmi) using the Model perspective and export it to a Mondrian Schema. This should be available for 30-day trial as well.

Lastly, please be aware that Mondrian will not work directly against Hive. (It presently tries to use its JDBC drivers in ways that the Hive JDBC driver is not yet prepared) The recommended use case is to build your OLAP cube in Hive from Hive data then export the Hive OLAP cube into a SQL RDBMS (MySQL) for interactive analysis.

I hope this helps get you further. Please let us know how it goes for you and if we can be of further assistance.

-Curtis

[ruakh]

Hi Curtis,

Thank you!

1.) We are using the EE beta, using licenses that Jake sent us; and according to the Enterprise Console, we do have a valid "Pentaho Dashboard Designer" subscription until 31 October. So, unless I'm misunderstanding you, that doesn't seem to be the problem. Do you have any other ideas what the problem might be?

2.) O.K., we'll read up on that and give it a try.

Thanks again!

-Ran

[cboyden]

Ran,

The licenses need to be installed on each machine that is operating Pentaho software. You can check to see what licenses are installed on a given system by entering either the enterprise-console directory or the license-installer directory and running "install_license display".

If I am now understanding this correctly. It sounds like you are using the Linux machine for the Hadoop beta program and the Windows machine for evaluating BI Suite 3.6. If this is the case the Linux machine should be running the Data-Integration server on port 9080 which does not offer any reporting or action sequence services and only allows you to monitor running jobs/transformations. While the Windows machine is running the BI Server on port 8080 which allows you to do all kinds of stuff through the Pentaho User Console.


So the first two things to check are appropriate licenses on the Linux machine and make sure the Linux machine is running the BI Server on port 8080 in addition to the DI Server on port 9080.

-Curtis

[ruakh]

Curtis,

We are running the BI Server on the Linux machine on port 8080, with the licenses I mentioned. That is what I meant above by "Pentaho User Console"; sorry if I'm using the wrong terminology here. (The only reason I mentioned the Windows machine is that that is where we saw the "New Dashboard" link that we want. Sorry for any confusion.)

Thanks,
-Ran

[ruakh]

Update: I spoke with Jake Cornelius today, and it turns out that the dashboard plugin simply hadn't been released yet for the Hadoop beta version. He released it earlier this afternoon, and we installed it, and that issue is resolved.

Thank you again for your help, Curtis. :-)

[cboyden]

I am happy you are able to move past this. I had not yet heard that the Dashboard Designer was not included in the Beta bits.

Let me know if you need more assistance.

-Curtis