The next major version of the Pentaho BI Platform is nearing completion. Milestone 3 is your opportunity to try out the new features and provide feedback in time for the Release Candidate.

The BI Platform has been extensively refactored in order to make it easier for developers to understand, modify, embed and extend. The plug-in layer has been improved so creating and deploying server plug-ins is much easier. A new user console makes navigating and managing your content much more intuitive. The new administration console simplifies deploying and configuring your server. Lots of UI enhancements to Report Designer and meta data now has row level security. A complete list of new features and bug fixes by product is available in JIRA.

Product naming in 2.0 has changed. Community Edition (CE) refers to the open source products and Enterprise Edition (EE) is the new name for an enhanced version of the Pentaho subscription. Details about the Pentaho Enterprise Edition and the new features and services it includes are available here.

Download Version 2 now!
• BI Server
• Report Designer
• Metadata Editor
• Design Studio

A special 2.0 Testing Forum has been set up for people to share their experience with version 2. Please use the forum to let us know what configuration you are running (operating system, database, browser, etc.) and whether you found any issues or not. We are aggressively moving toward a Release Candidate (RC1) in early October, all feedback is helpful even if you had no problems.

Thanks for making the Pentaho open source project successful,

Doug "Spanky" Moran
CommunityConnection@pentaho.org

In order to stay connected, the group of the Mainz attendees created the Pentaho Open Source Business Intelligence Suite - European User Group hosted on XING. They are planning a user group meeting on October 16 at the Universität Leipzig in Germany. All Pentaho community members are invited to attend, details are available here. If you are not already a member of XING, you can join for free.

Indonesia:
Feris Thia started the Pentaho User Group Indonesia recently. Membership is growing quickly and they already have some tips and tutorials posted.

Brazil
The oldest and most active Pentaho user group is the Grupo de Usuários Pentaho Brasil. It's almost 2 years old, has over 270 members and a very active message board. I've been told it's the best Portuguese Pentaho resource on the net.

If you know of any other active Pentaho user groups or you are interested in starting one, email CommunityConnection@pentaho.org.

Build:
The complete refactor of the 2.0 codeline necessitated an equally drastic redesign to the build process. The build architecture wiki page explains these changes. The Pentaho Development Workspace Reference explains how to set up your local environment.

BI Platform Extension Points:

A feature of the new platform architecture is the addition of extension points. Extension points make it easy to customize the server.
• Menu items and the functions they perform may be modified or added
• Java classes that generate UI pages can be dynamically added to the server
• New object types can be added to the solution repository

JavaDoc:
The latest Javadoc for the Pentaho projects is available at: http://community.pentaho.com/javadoc

Roadmap:
The Pentaho roadmap for the next six months has been updated for Q1 2009: http://community.pentaho.com/roadmap

Highlights for this release. For a complete list, see the release notes.

• Support for Teradata 12.0 (including Grouping Sets)
• Improvements to calculated member solve order
• Drill through support for calculated members
• Bug fixes

Highlights for this release. For a complete list, see the release notes.

• Improved layout capabilities including zoom and snap to grid
• Integrated view of logging and step performance
• Step performance charts
• Parallel job execution
• New step and job entry types

For a complete list of bugs fixed in this release, see the release notes.

Highlights for this release. For a complete list, see the release notes.

• New user console
• New administration console
• User/Role Administration
• Data Source Administration
• Improved Scheduling

Here's an on-ramp to contributing to the projects, the location of the core tools of a successful Pentaho developer:

• Community Home
• Downloads
• Get the Source Code
• The Forums
• Issue Tracking with JIRA
• Documentation Wiki
• Tech Tips
• IRC - Server irc.freenode.net Port: 6667 Channel: ##pentaho

Where do you start? Email CommunityConnection@pentaho.org.

Pentaho Training sessions offer the fastest route to becoming a "solution-ready" developer with the Pentaho Open BI Suite.

Sign up early and get a 20% discount!

Install/Admin Pentaho BI Suite
Chicago, IL : Oct 21 - 23

Data Integration for DB Devs
Minneapolis, MN : Oct 6 - 9

Reporting Solution Dev
Denver, CO : Nov 4 - 6

Intro to ETL and PDI
Web Based : Oct 13

Report Design Techniques
Web Based : Oct 20 - 23
Web Based : Nov 17 - 20

Plug-in Dev for PDI
Web Based : Nov 4

See entire training schedule at www.pentaho.com/services/training

Where do you live?
Leeds, UK

What company do you work for and what do you do?
I work for Encon Insulation part of the Wolseley Group in the IT departments. I mostly work with the various business intelligence systems and with general data extraction.

When I'm not doing either of those tasks I spend a lot of my time developing bespoke Java applications to help our end users present and use the data in a more manageable format.

Tell us about your career/education
I attended Leeds University for 2 years, ran a nightclub then landed this job doing BI and love it, well most of it.

When did you first become interested in open source?
I've used Linux since I was about 14 and my Uncle introduced me to it when I was doing work experience at his consultancy.

What projects do you work on at Pentaho?
I'm working on the Halogen code, trying to create a nice alternative to JPivot that even the most basic of computer users will be able to use to extract the data they require.

I am also working on a LiveDVD and various Pentaho addons to go with this DVD.

Do you work with any projects other than Pentaho?
Nope.

What do you do in your spare time?
I enjoy riding my bike, I also enjoy listening to music, annoying the members of the ##pentaho IRC channel and answering forum posts.

I also devote some of my time off to working on various Pentaho related projects, yes I know its sad.

Anything else you would like to add?
I've appeared on the TV show Heartbeat twice. And I'm a Grade 5 classically trained Clarinet player.