Pentaho
Pentaho is the brand name for several data management software products that make up the Pentaho+ Data Platform. These include Pentaho Data Integration, Pentaho Business Analytics, Pentaho Data Catalog, and Pentaho Data Optimiser.
Overview
Pentaho is owned by Hitachi Vantara, and is a separate business unit. Pentaho started out as business intelligence software developed by the Pentaho Corporation in 2004. It comprises Pentaho Data Integration and Pentaho Business Analytics. These provide data integration, OLAP services, reporting, information dashboards, data mining and extract, transform, load capabilities.Pentaho was acquired by Hitachi Data Systems in 2015 and in 2017 became part of Hitachi Vantara. In November 2023, Hitachi Vantara launched the Pentaho+ Platform, comprising the original Pentaho Data Integration and Pentaho Business Analytics software, and new Pentaho Data Catalog, and Pentaho Data Optimiser software products. Hitachi Vantara intends to extend the Pentaho+ platform with tools for Data Quality and Data Mastering.
Products
Pentaho Data Optimizer (PDO)
Pentaho Data Optimizer allows organizations to manage, maintain and tier their data based on its business value, the cost of managing it, and regulatory requirements. It uses the auto-discovery features of the Pentaho Data Catalog to achieve this.Pentaho Data Catalog (PDC)
In March 2020 and June 2021 Hitachi Vantara acquired Waterline Data and Io-Tahoe respectively, and amalgamated both into its Pentaho Data Catalog. PDC automatically finds, analyzes, and tags structured and unstructured data and contextualizes it with business glossary terms and governance policies.Pentaho Data Integration (PDI) & Pentaho Business Analytics (PBA).
Pentaho Data Integration and Pentaho Business Analytics use a Java framework to create business intelligence solutions. Although most known for its Business Analysis Server, the PDI/PBA software is indeed a couple of Java classes with specific functionality. On top of those Java classes one can build any business intelligence solution.The only exception to this model is the ETL tool Pentaho Data Integration - PDI PDI is a set of software used to design data flows that can be run either in a server or standalone processes. PDI encompasses Kitchen, a job and transformation runner, and Spoon, a graphical user interface to design such jobs and transformations.
Features such as reporting and OLAP are achieved by integrating sub-projects into the PDI/PBA framework, like Mondrian OLAP engine and jFree Report. For some time by now those projects have been brought into Pentaho's curating. Some of those subprojects even have standalone clients like Pentaho Report Designer, a front-end for jFree Reports, and Pentaho Schema Workbench, a GUI to write XMLs used by Mondrian to serve OLAP cubes.
Pentaho offers enterprise and community editions of those PDI software. The enterprise software is obtained through an annual subscription and contains extra features and support not found in the community edition. PDI & PBA's core offering is frequently enhanced by add-on products, usually in the form of plug-ins, from the company and the broader community of users.
Server applications
Pentaho Enterprise Edition and Pentaho Community Edition.| Product | Offering | Type | Recent version | Recent version | Description |
| Pentaho BA Platform | EE, CE | Server application | 7.1 | 7.1 | Commonly referred to as the BI Platform, and recently renamed Business Analytics Platform, makes up the core software piece that hosts content created both in the server itself through plug-ins or files published to the server from the desktop applications. It includes features for managing security, running reports, displaying dashboards, report bursting, scripted business rules, OLAP analysis and scheduling out of the box. Commercial plug-ins from Pentaho expand out-of-the-box features. A few open-source plug-in projects also expand capabilities of the server. The Pentaho BA Platform runs in the Apache Java Application Server. It can be embedded into other Java Application Servers. |
| Pentaho Analysis Services | EE, CE | Server application | 3.7.0 | 3.6.1 | Pentaho Analysis Services, codenamed Mondrian, is an open-source OLAP server, written in Java. It supports the MDX query language and the XML for Analysis and olap4j interface specifications. It reads from SQL and other data sources and aggregates data in a memory cache. Mondrian can be run separately from the Pentaho BI Platform, but is always bundled with the platform itself in both EE and CE versions. |
| Pentaho Dashboard Designer | EE | Server plug-in | 5.0.6 | - | A commercial plug-in provided to enterprise edition subscribers. It allows users to create dashboards, which are collections of other content components displayed together with the goal of providing a centralized view of key performance indicators s and other business data movements, letting users monitor them and make decisions. Content components are usually individual Information graphics, tables, OLAP views or reports. The plug-in simplifies dashboard creation through the use of layout templates, drag-and-drop interaction and a GUI for providing parameters and inputs to dashboard components. |
| Pentaho Analysis | EE | Server plug-in | 5.0.6 | - | The Pentaho Analyzer plug-in provides a web-based, drag-and-drop OLAP viewer. It allows a user to visually create MDX queries by dragging parts of a previously defined Mondrian OLAP schema onto a canvas, where other activities can take place like filtering, sorting, creating calculated members from other measures, exporting the result table to PDF or MS Excel, and optionally graphing the data. It is also known to work on Apple iPads by using the Safari web browser. |
| Pentaho Interactive Reporting | EE | Server plug-in | 5.0.6 | - | This plug-in enables users to create ad hoc reports in a visual drag-and-drop fashion. |
| Pentaho Data Access Wizard | EE, CE | Server plug-in | - | - | This plug-in is bundled with all servers and allows users to create new data sources for use throughout the system from other databases or CSV files uploaded to the server while using a setup wizard. During the steps of creating a data source users also are given a chance to create a data model describing how columns or fields relate to each other creating hierarchies of relationships like Time: Year, Quarters, Months, Weeks and Product Division, Category, Type etc. The resultant model is used by Mondrian and any other plug-in like Analyzer or Saiku to create new queries against the newly created data source. This component is part of what Pentaho introduces as agile BI, which simply means having a way to start from basic data and quickly iterate through steps to discover the proper way to structure, study and present the data. |
| Pentaho Mobile | EE | Server piece | 5.0.6 | - | A new addition since 4.5-GA suite that is a user interface adapted for use with the Apple iPad. It exposes all of the major functionality of OLAP analysis and running of reports and dashboards that allow greater interaction on a small, touchscreen. Mobile also adds features for bookmarking favorite content for easy access and the concept of opening several pieces of content in tabs. |
Desktop/client applications
Community driven, open-source Pentaho server plug-ins
All of these plug-ins function with Pentaho Enterprise Edition and the older Pentaho Community Edition.| Product | Type | Recent version | Description |
| Ctools | Server plug-in suite | Various | Known as the Community tools, it includes a growing array of features usually contained in a package with an abbreviated name where the first C always stands for community and simultaneously represents its status as being both free of cost and open-source. The tools are produced and managed by Webdetails. Documentation on the tools is found at . Most often the Ctools suite is installed by using a linux script., but there are plans in an upcoming release to have a package manager included in the BA Server that helps with installation. |
| Community Charting Components | Server plug-in | Various | A charting library on top of Protovis, a very powerful free and open-source visualization toolkit. The aim of CCC is to provide developers with a way to include into their dashboards the basic chart types without losing the main principle: Extensibility. The charts created with CCC become components that appear in dashboards. |
| Community Build Framework | Build Script Framework | 3.7 | Focused on a multi-project/ multi-environment scenario, the Community Build Framework provide a way to set up and deploy Pentaho-based applications. It is an Apache Ant, Java build-script that allows a user to create a template of their Pentaho BA Server installation, including patches and any customizations or special content and roll it out quickly. It can help migrations to new versions of the BA Server, and with rapidly producing customized Pentaho servers for clients. |
| Community Data Access | Server plug-in | latest | Acts as a common layer for accessing data on the Pentaho BA server. CDA files can contain SQL, MDX, Pentaho Data Integration transformation files, scripted data sources and more. CDA also provides a REST API for directly calling the Pentaho BA server and receiving the results of a query back as JSON, XML, XLS, HTML or CSV. The default is JSON. HTML output makes it easy for MS Excel users to perform Web queries and pull results directly into an Excel workbook without additional software in the middle. CDA comes bundled in all of Pentaho's servers. |
| Community Data Browser | Server plug-in | Community Data Browser uses a visual OLAP browser called Saiku to create a query which can be used by R for performing analytics on the result set. | |
| Community Distributed Cache | Server plug-in | latest | CDC stands for Community Distributed Cache and allows for high-performance, scalable and distributed memory clustering cache based on Hazelcast for both CDA and Mondrian. CDC is a Pentaho plug-in that provides the following features:
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| Community Data Generator | PDI Jobs | N/A | CDG is a data warehouse generator that helps create sample data for creating proof of concept dashboards. Given the definition of dimensions that we want, CDG will randomize data within certain parameters and output 3 different things: |
| Community Data Validation | Server plug-in | CDV adds the ability of creating validation tests on the Pentaho BA server for the purpose of verifying both the integrity of the server itself and also the data being used by the server. | |
| Community Graphics Generator | Server plug-in | latest | Pentaho plug-in that allows the user to export CCC/CDE charts as images, enabling the inclusion of CDE charts inside Pentaho Report Designer reports. In short, this plug-in is able to render server-side exactly the same chart that is rendered on the browser by CDE/CDF. Main characteristics:
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| Community Dashboard Editor | Server plug-in | 20120719 | CDE is an advanced user tool for creating dashboards in the Pentaho BA server. CDE and the technology underneath allows users to develop and deploy dashboards in the Pentaho platform in a fast and effective way. It is not as user friendly as Pentaho Dashboard Designer plug-in, but enables users to create much more sophisticated designs. |
| Community Dashboard Framework | Server plug-in | 4.8-stable | CDF comes bundled in all of Pentaho's servers. It is the framework used both by CDE and Pentaho's Dashboard Designer to create dashboards on the system. |
| Community Startup Tabs | Server plug-in | 1.0 | Out of the box a Pentaho BA Server comes with a user interface called the Pentaho User Console which show all content by opening tabs within itself. Community Startup Tabs provide an easy way to define and show specialized content to users by automatically opening tabs when they sign in. |
| Saiku | Server plug-in | latest | Saiku is a modular open-source analysis suite offering lightweight OLAP which remains easily embeddable, extendable and configurable. It is similar in form and function to the Pentaho Analyzer plug-in.A RESTful server connects to existing OLAP systems, which then powers user-friendly, intuitive analytics via a lightweight frontend. |
| Saiku-Reporting | Server plug-in | 1.0-GA | A rapidly developing AD HOC reporting tool, similar to Pentaho's Interactive Reporting plug-in. Key Features:
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