Briefs

By Seth Grimes

The value and utilization of open-source software have grown immensely in recent years, but in the booming analytics market, open source is strangely not keeping pace. A variety of projects are out there -- search open-source nexus SourceForge.net for "OLAP" or "reporting," and you'll find dozens. Unfortunately, many of these attempts seem amateurish, more intentions than anything approaching commercial-grade products. The projects that do appear worth a trial run boast only niche rather than broad-market appeal. Nonetheless, they do suggest far greater future adoption of open source for decision systems.

Where's the Linux OLAP?

First and foremost is Mondrian, an open-source OLAP server that accesses relational databases and supports Microsoft's Multidimensional Expressions (MDX) language, as well as the Java OLAP (JOLAP) and XML for Analysis application programming interfaces (APIs). A companion project, JPivot, provides a Java Server Page (JSP) tag library for tables and charts and acts as a Mondrian client. "The feedback I get from users is that they love how simple JPivot is to configure�just write a simple XML file or use the Eclipse plug-in," says lead developer Julian Hyde. "They love the JPivot user interface, and they find it fits seamlessly into their Web applications."

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