| Pentaho Data Integration 2.4 Released |
We are proud to announce the release of Pentaho Data Integration 2.4. This exciting new release features significant improvements in performance, scalability and ease-of-use. Highlights of this release include:
- Remote monitoring and execution of transformations
- Clustering support
- Unified job and transformation editor
- Numerous new steps and transformation objects
- And much, much more...
Thanks to all of our contributors who helped in the development and testing of this fantastic new release.
Download Pentaho Data Integration 2.4 today!
Modified Javascript Values Step
Community Addition to PDI 2.4
Every once in a while we get big donations in terms of source code in the Kettle project. One of these donations came in the form of a new and improved JavaScript engine for Kettle.
It was written by Martin Lange who needed a high performance Javascript engine for one of his clients. Martin is one of the people behind German company Proconis.
The new Javascript engine step has achieved huge performance compaired to the regular "Javascript Value" by using the core Rhino embedding system to create new conversion functions. In the new step, Martin has extended the Javascript function library with new efficient functions, including date handling.
Not only does this provide serious performance gains but we can also start building a more re-usable library. The system is easier to re-use because it no longer relies on the internal Value objects exposed by the Kettle environment, but rather leverages Javascript itself.
If that is not enough, Martin created a new tabbed user interface to allow for multiple scripts to be loaded and executed, with pre and post execution scripts, color coding and much more.
This is the initial release of the new step, but I'm sure we'll hear much more about this step in the future.
Cheers,
Matt, Kettle Founder and Chief Architect
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| New Pentaho Reporting Releases Available |
Pentaho Report Designer 1.2 RC1 Available
We're happy to tell you that Pentaho Report Designer 1.2 RC1 is now available for download. We would really like to get as much testing and feedback as possible from everyone to make this the best release possible, so please feel free to hit the forums with your bug reports, questions and comments!
Highlights of Pentaho Report Designer 1.2:
- Easily begin report creation using templates with the embedded Pentaho Report Design Wizard.
- Access data sources including relational, OLAP (Mondria aka Pentaho Analysis), XML and Java methods.
- Preview and Run reports in PDF, HTML, Excel, CSV and RTF.
- Publish reports directly to the Pentaho server.
Subreports Beefed Up in Pentaho Reporting 0.8.8
Pentaho Reporting maintenance release 0.8.8-01 is now available from Sourceforge.net. This release stabilized greatly the new subreporting features, as detailed in the release notes. Note that the subreporting functionality is not yet available in the Pentaho platform or design tools.
Improvements to Pentaho Reporting 0.9.0
If you missed the release last month, The Pentaho Reporting 0.9.x codeline is ushering in the new era of reporting. This release is a full rewrite of the old codebase, incompatible with all previous releases, and as of yet, incompatible with the Pentaho platform. With this release, we shift our reporting paradigm from absolutely-positioned, banded reports into document oriented reports.
This month, we have released Pentaho Reporting 0.9.0-02, the first maintenance release to provide fixes to our 0.9.x codeline. Fixes include stabilizing subreports, better support for empty datasets and much more. Try it out and give your feedback in the forums!
Pentaho Reporting 0.9.x Roadmap: What's Your Take?
Next up on the Pentaho Reporting 0.9.0 roadmap - Charting.
For the charting, we are currently in the process of collecting the
requirements for the chart-components. It would be a great help to get you, the reporting community, to send your feedback, suggestions and feature requests, so that the result is closer to the
user's needs.
At the moment, Thomas, the project founder and lead architect, is planning to include chart-backends for:
- JFreeChart (the standard charting engine in Java)
- OpenOffice Charts (for perfect exports for OpenOffice documents)
- JCharts (an alternative Java charting engine)
- Dojo.Charting (AJAX Charting for HTML exports)
What we are looking for? FEEDBACK!
- What chart types should have priority (should
be implemented first)?
- What use cases should we address?
- Is there
anything special we should take care of?
And more generally:
- What do our users expect from a reporting engine?
- What
can be improved on today's reporting engine (any engine!)?
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TDWI Radio News:
Open-Source BI, Moving Beyond the Myths
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The Data Warehouse Institute recently interviewed Pentaho CEO Richard Daley, inquiring about the affairs and future of Open Source Business Intelligence.
Tune in to this TDWI Radio News interview to learn:
- What’s included in Pentaho’s technology stack
- Which companies are using Pentaho’s tools
- How Daley & Co. make their money
- How far down the road Pentaho is looking
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| Pentaho Finalist in Jolt Product Excellence Awards |
For the past 16 years, the Dr. Dobb's Jolt Product Excellence Awards have been presented annually to showcase products that have "jolted" the industry with their significance and made the task of creating software faster, easier, and more efficient. This year, Pentaho has been chosen as a finalist in the Enterprise Tools category!
Dr. Dobb's Awards and Events Manager Rosalyn Lum comments "Competition to stay ahead is fierce and competition fosters innovation. This year's Jolt Award finalists represent those companies that keep innovation alive."
Congrats Pentaho team and Pentaho community! The final selections will be announced in March at the 20th Software Development Conference & Expo West at the Santa Clara Convention Center. Go here for the whole story.
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| Working with the Projects |
Not sure where to find all the tools you need to be a committer in the Pentaho projects? Here's an on-ramp to contributing to the projects, the locations of the core tools of a successful Pentaho developer:
Where do you start? Email communityconnection@pentaho.org.
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| JFreeReport's Name is Changing |
As announced roughly a year ago, we are planning to rebrand JFreeReport to make it part of Pentaho Reporting.
This change should be non-disruptive, and will not affect the projects java namespace or technical documentation. What you will see is a new logo, a changed community subdomain, and high-level references to Pentaho Reporting rather than JFreeReport. This change is being made in partnership with jfree.org, and the jfreechart project to avoid potential community confusion.
Thank you for your patience while we make the transition.
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| Meet the Team |
Will Gorman
Pentaho Software Developer
Tell us a little about your engineering career to date.
I started my career at GE Research, where I worked on projects ranging from aircraft engine expert systems to medical informatics focused on predicting Alzheimer's progression.
When did you first become interested in open source?
Back in college, I started dabbling with Linux for my server needs.
Since then, I've released most of my spare time software projects as open source. Two projects that I'm most proud of are JAIMBot, a AOL IM Robot architecture and and ImageIM, a plugin for GAIM that allows people to send screenshots easily over IM.
What projects do you work on at Pentaho?
My focus to date has been working within Pentaho's BI Platform, specifically user interface and security enhancements.
What do you like most about working for Pentaho?
My favorite part about working here are the people I work with. The engineers here are top notch and their passion for open source is infectious. We work together in an open lab environment, which makes each day extremely entertaining.
What do you do in your spare time?
In addition to spending time with my wife and son, I'm always coming up with ideas to work on in my spare time. One of my favorite hobbies is BattleBricks, a competitive Lego robotics group that I started with a group of friends.
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