Can we compare saiku with Pentaho Analyzer?

Question

I'm currently in an internship and i have to create a whole BI application. I think i'll use pentaho, and I have to use just open source component.

I know that Pentaho Analyzer is not free My question is: Is saiku an equivalent of analyzer? If yes, can I use it with pentaho instead of analyzer?

thks

Answer 1

Have you think about a pure javascript UI to pivot your olap cubes? There is one such component calls WebPivotTable at http://webpivottable.com

Jpivot, saiku and pentaho are all based on olap4j API so that they all need a java server side service. WebPivotTable use AJAX call to xmla service directly so that it can be used to pivot any xmla OLAP server, like mondrian, SSAS, iccube. Since it doesn't tie up with any java back end and also it is pure javascript based, you can easily integrate it into any website or web application.

Answer 2

I'm the developer of Pivot4J project and want to share my (subjective) opinion on the subject.

First, as though you righteously assumed Pivot4J to be more of an API than an application, it does not always mean you need to write lot of code to use it.

We also have a Pentaho BI plugin which does not require any coding and has comparable features to Saiku plugin, though it's targeted toward the yet unreleased Pentaho 5.0 platform.

And our sample application provides most of the functionalities that JPivot web application has, even though it lacks a data source configuration feature which will be soon to be fixed.

Compared to Saiku, I think each project has its own advantage in different scenarios.

Saiku has a much lightweight architecture on the client side than our sample application and the plugin, so it can be deployed and embedded virtually anywhere.

While it's not much difficult to create a full REST style analytic application with Pivot4J, our current sample and plugin applications require at least a Servlet container to run and are more difficult to be embeded than Saiku in certain environment.

On the other hand, as Pivot4J is designed to be UI independent API from the start, it could provide more flexibility than Saiku in my opinion to developers when they want to build their own application on top of it, or intend to customize core behaviors of the API.

For example, if you want to use Pivot4J with your own application which is build with ExtJS, DhtmlX, or any other UI toolkits, it'd be much easier to achieve a seamless integration with Pivot4J, as it provides you with convenient abstract extension points to do that.

Finally, if you're familiar with Javascript you might find working with Saiku easier as it delegates most of the UI related works to the client side.

On the other hand, if you're an old school Java developer like me :) you might find our sample application to be easier to understand and work with, as there's virtually no custom script involved and everything is done on the server side with JSF component model.

To conclude, I'd like to say that Pivot4J is not just an API which cannot be used without writing much codes as it already includes quite feature complete Pentaho BI plugin for the upcoming 5.0 release of the platform. And as Pivot4J and Saiku take rather different approach from each other, each has its own strength and advantage which could be leveraged to suit the specific use case.

Answer 3

Yes of course. Both the tools use the same underlying OLAP engine - Mondrian. Saiku is essentially the same as analyzer providing many of the same features - however it has a different architecture which additionally makes it very embeddable and pluggable. Plus Saiku can be used standalone too if you want to.

Check out the demo at dev.analytical-labs.com to see what it can do.

Also for help you wont find many tools with such a great community - hook up with them on Freenode IRC at either ##Pentaho or ##Saiku depending on your questions!

Pentaho is the right choice for OS BI too - Presume you looked at Jaspersoft as well? Worth a look but you'll no doubt realise the features are better in Pentaho.