open source business intelligence solutions
which open source business intelligence solution would you recommend?
All I need is to build some cubes and let the end user play with dimensions, filter data, sort, etc, and once it's done being able to export it to excel...
I'd like the solution to be as simple and easy on resources as possible, and also I'd like it to be as much open source as possible, by the way. I've heard that many solutions available do have many restrictions when it comes to there community version.
I'd like to ear your advices and the pros/cons of each alternative, to help me choose the right tool, and if you could point me to some basic demo and tutorial to get started.
thanks a lot
ps: I'm using sql server databases, they aren't huge databases (in general less than a million records) and I doesn't necessarily have to work on "live" data...
ps: some useful links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_intelligence_tools#Open_source_free_products
http://www.manageability.org/blog/stuff/open-source-java-business-intelligence
http://www.jaspersoft.com/jasperanalysis
http://community.pentaho.com/projects/bi_platform/ http://community.pentaho.com/faq/platform_licensing.php
http://www.eclipse.org/birt/phoenix/
http://www.spagoworld.org/xwiki/bin/view/SpagoWorld/
spago demo http://spagobi.eng.it/SpagoBI/servlet/AdapterHTTP?PAGE=LoginPage&NEW_SESSION=TRUE
http://ostatic.com/blog/open-source-business-intelligence-software-on-the-rise
jpalo demo http://www.jpalo.com/en/products/start_products.html
jpalo (user:viewer/viewer) http://www.ten-sw.com:8080/Palo-Pivot/com.tensegrity.wpalo.WPalo/WPalo.html?locale=en_US&theme=blue
Answer
As far as I remember from playing with Pentaho and BIRT, these tools are quite difficult to install and learn. But if you don't mind invest your time into learning cumbersome user interfaces you get quite powerful tools at the end of the day.
May I suppose you are interested in open-source BI because of budget rather than 'religion'? If so I'd consider a low-cost/trial SaaS alternative at least to deliver a quick prototype to your users at first.
In the meantime use your time to evaluate and learn an open-source tool of your choice.
Finally, in a couple of weeks, you get happy users who can play with dimensions, create reports and give you valuable feedback and a good knowledge of a BI tool of your choice so you can do a qualified decision about which way to go.
Disclaimer: I work as a consultant for www.gooddata.com - a company that offers that kind of SaaS BI software I'm proposing to use at least to deliver an early prototype to your users. Feel free to ask for any help if you try to do it in the way outlined above.