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Archive for the ‘Palo’ Category

TAG Cubes – SQLite Star Query Part III

Posted in ETL, Palo, SQLite, VBA, excel, olap, xLite, tagged , , on September 29, 2009 | 9 Comments »

It’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of SQLite and Excel, particularly when used in combination. I also greatly admire the open source BI engines, Palo and Mondrian. Mondrian appeals because of its “ROLAP with a cache” architecture and its implementation of MS’s excellent MDX language. When I say MDX is excellent I’m talking with my [...]

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Palo HTTP API via Excel/VBA

Posted in Palo, SQLite, VBA, tagged on June 22, 2009 | Leave a Comment »

As a result of a request on the Palo support forum last week looking for a VBA tool to directly access the Palo OLAP server via its native HTTP API, I realised I had such a tool. I had built it about a year ago (to use alongside Fiddler Web Debugger and .NET Reflector) to help me understand [...]

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Palo BI Suite Community Edition

Posted in BI, GoogleApps, Groovy, Palo, olap, tagged , , on June 12, 2009 | 5 Comments »

Jedox have finally published a roadmap for the Palo BI Suite Community Edition, having caused considerable confusion by pre-announcing its availability last April. See here for the details.  The headline dates are, a beta version due 1st of July with a Release Candidate due 1st September.
Although the announcement in April was essentially vapour-ware (no Worksheet [...]

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SQLite as the MP3 of data

Posted in BI, ETL, Palo, SQLite, VBA, excel, olap, tagged on March 14, 2009 | 18 Comments »

… and Excel as its “mixing desk”.
When I tell people that I use SQLite in combination with Excel (via xLite) as my datasmithing platform, many ask why SQLite? (Many others ask why Excel?  but “sin scéal eile”, that’s another discussion – Excel as the iPod of Downloaded Data.) Those that question my use of SQLite [...]

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Spending time on Excel-SQLite, C, VBA Callbacks & Twitter

Posted in BI, ETL, Palo, SQLite, VBA, Web2.0, excel, xLite, tagged , on November 20, 2008 | 3 Comments »

Haven’t posted here in a while as my spare time has been soaked up programing, well actually refactoring would be more exact.  My xLite “SQLite empowered Excel” codebase has grown over the years and required a serious makeover to get rid of stuff I no longer use and to generally make it more robust.  I [...]

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I’ll give up Excel Pivot Tables when you take ‘em from my cold, dead hands

Posted in BI, Palo, excel, olap, tagged , , , , on October 10, 2008 | 19 Comments »

Jedox, the company behind the open source MOLAP server Palo, has just announced an MDX driver. This means that it’s now possible to access Palo cubes using Excel Pivot Tables or indeed any tool that supports ODBO.  This is excellent news, as MOLAP to most Excel users IS a Pivot Table, and somewhat like the NRA, [...]

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Why Larry hates the cloud, and my data trinity.

Posted in AmazonAWS, ETL, Palo, SQLite, cloud, excel, olap, tagged , on October 4, 2008 | Leave a Comment »

Last week Oracle certified Amazon EC2 as a supported platform, that same week Larry Elison attacked the concept of cloud computing as pure hype. Obviously, Larry is not happy with this whole cloud thing, and I think it’s not just the threat it poses to the software industry’s traditional licensing model that worries him, rather, as Robert X. Cringely [...]

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Cloudy skies, cloudy apps…

Posted in BI, ETL, Ireland, Palo, Web2.0, cloud, data, excel, news, olap, tagged , , , on August 28, 2008 | 4 Comments »

Just back from a break in Clifden, Connemara, summer is nearly over, the kids return to school today, back to work.
Counties Galway and Mayo were like the rest of the country last week, a tad wet, but unlike the developed east of the island, flooding was not a problem; a problematic drainage area is called [...]

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Talend + SQLite + Groovy the new Oracle …

Posted in BI, EC2, ETL, Groovy, Palo, SQLite, Talend, data, excel, olap, tagged , on August 2, 2008 | 5 Comments »

… well, at least for me.  Let me explain.
For most of my datasmithing career, I’ve had access to corporate Oracle databases and now with the availability of  Oracle10g  Express I can even run my own Oracle instances at home or on EC2.  The combination of a powerful SQL engine, expressive scripting language (PL/SQL) ,OS independence, [...]

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OLAP Cube as a Mind Map

Posted in BI, Palo, excel, olap, tagged , , on July 30, 2008 | 3 Comments »

If you’ve worked with OLAP technologies for any length of time you’ll undoubtedly have been in the situation where you’ve had to explain the concept of an OLAP Cube to a “newbie”.  If the person in question has come across Excel pivot-tables, then you can probably short-circuit the conversation some what, explaining that a pivot [...]

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Groovy as Talend’s scripting language

Posted in ETL, Groovy, Java, Palo, SQLite, Talend, data, tagged , on July 20, 2008 | 6 Comments »

Although I had decided to use Talend (Java version) as my primary ETL tool I still had one major problem with it, its lack of a scripting tool.  Kettle (Pentaho PDI) has Javascript, Excel has VBA, Picalo has (well OK, is) Python and Talend in its Perl version has Perl.  I could have gone (and [...]

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Palo OLAP and sparse dimensions.

Posted in BI, ETL, Palo, excel, tagged , , , , , , , on May 26, 2008 | 9 Comments »

Last week I tried out both the latest Palo 2.5 release and its sister product, ETL-Server.  Although I’ve not done any proper benchmarks, 2.5 does appear to be faster than the previous release and the Excel add-in also behaves better when co-habiting with other add-ins and macros (the previous release’s use of, and response to, [...]

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Palo ETL Server – Not for me …

Posted in BI, ETL, Palo, SQLite, excel, tagged , on May 1, 2008 | 2 Comments »

Jedox have just released V1.0 of their Palo-centric ETL Server. I had been looking forward to this, not so much for its ETL ability (which is somewhat limited when compared to the likes of Pentaho PDI or Talend) but for the drill-through capability it would add to Palo. Alas, there’s a catch, you [...]

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Python the new VBA ?

Posted in BI, ETL, Palo, Python, Ruby, SQLite, VBA, Web2.0, data, excel, news, tagged , , , , on April 11, 2008 | 11 Comments »

These last two weeks, Python has been on my mind. First off, last week I decided to make time to fully investigate Picalo, an open-source Python-based data analysis tool, and then, this week, Google announced their long awaited cloud-computing offering, Google Apps Engine, with the language at its core.
Python was the first of [...]

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Java – at the eye of a perfect storm

Posted in ETL, Java, Palo, cloud, tagged , , , , , , , , on March 11, 2008 | 3 Comments »

The “perfect storm” of ubiquitous broadband, powerful and cheap laptops, virtual machines, cloud-based services/infrastructure and open-source software is changing the nature of IT in a way that’s reminiscent of the revolution started by the IBM PC. Although a lot of emphasis has been put on the influence of consumer-focused services on [...]

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Dublin Bus and PALO ETL – the connection!

Posted in AmazonAWS, BI, ETL, Palo, S3, SQLite, SimpleDB, Talend, VBA, excel, kettle, olap, tagged , , , , on January 26, 2008 | 5 Comments »

Dublin buses, as is the norm with most road-based public transport systems in our increasingly car-choked cities, tend to operate on the basis of “no sign of a bus for ages, then two or three arrive at the same time”. Palo MOLAP ETL options appear to be following the same pattern; we’ve been waiting for [...]

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PALO ETL-Server and SAP

Posted in ETL, Palo, olap, tagged , , on January 5, 2008 | 1 Comment »

Jedox have just published a roadmap for their open-source ETL-Server, release date of March 2008, same date as the next release of the Palo OLAP Server. In a future release they intend to offer SAP RFC/BAPI and SAP-BW XMLA support, being an old SAP hand this looks very interesting.
There’s also a features page [...]

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PALO ETL Server, more sightings …

Posted in ETL, Java, Palo, olap, tagged , , , , on January 3, 2008 | 1 Comment »

First day back after Christmas, snow falling outside.
More additions to the PALO ETL-Server SourceForge project, new version of the core and, a new web server – built using Jetty and Apache Axis. Axis is a SOAP handler so I looked around for the WSDL file to see what services are to be exposed and [...]

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PALO ETL-Server, first sighting …

Posted in ETL, Palo, Talend, kettle, tagged , , on December 6, 2007 | 1 Comment »

I was wrong. I figured Jedox would build their new ETL server on one of the existing open source ETL project code-bases, either Talend or Pentaho’s Kettle. Instead, the new alpha ETL server code which has just been uploaded to SourceForge is based on neither and appears to have been developed by another [...]

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New ETL platform for PALO OLAP

Posted in BI, ETL, Palo, Talend, kettle, olap, tagged , , , on November 28, 2007 | Leave a Comment »

Jedox have announced that they intend to ship a Palo centric ETL open source server product early next year. This is excellent news and is on top of the new rules engine that was added to Palo this summer. Open source MOLAP has suddenly taken off the training wheels and is getting ready [...]

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