Menu
We have a large POSTGRESQL transactional database (around 70 million rows in all), and have previously created a data warehouse from this (updated daily) to run reports off of.
To make this more flexible (as lots of different users require different reports and aren't very good at specifying what they want) we would like to create a multi dimensional OLAP cube and expose this via web services to our customers and possibly outsource report creation.
We program in .NET (mainly vb.net) and I believe this can be achieved by using XMLA for the webservice (or WCF) layer, but after a bit of research (everything seems propietory - either SSAS and SQL server, or Jasper Server and Jasper Analysis etc), I'm unsure of the following and wondered if anyone else out there has any experience they can share:
Scalability and Performance are huge factors for us, along with quick development time and an interface that is usable by users who only just learned how to use a mouse :p
Note: ideally this solution be OpenSource and Free or less than £1k (most enterprise solutions are silly money)
293
PostgreSQL is a powerful database, and for OLAP workloads, it can certainly meet expectations. With a good deal of planning and tuning, the database engine will be able to deliver analytics at scale.
With OLAP-Technologies you replace your cubes one to one with another technology. Therefore you don't change anything on your current architecture but replace your cubes with a modern big data optimised technology which focus on fastest query response time.
We came across a similar type of an issue and used Modrian (Pentahoe BI) as the OLAP server. This is free and open source. It should provide you access to the OLAP cube from your VB code since Mondrian is also based on XMLA. Front end, as far as browsing the cube and running live mdx queries are concerned, you will need to come up with some solution (actually we are currently developing and integrating the capability to our own BI tool). But we were successful using Mondrian on a web based solution.
86
We (www.icCube.com) got a customer with similar setup regarding the data (volume and postgres).
Regarding the front-end and access via .Net: we're not specialist (we're from JAVA) but the OLAP driver (actually the same used by Excel) should be ok to access our cube via XMLA (and transparent for your programmers).
We're not free but I guess quite affordable compared to the big names in the BI market.
42
If you love us? You can donate to us via Paypal or buy me a coffee so we can maintain and grow! Thank you!
Donate Us With
