The Pentaho BI Platform provides the architecture and infrastructure required to build solutions to business intelligence (BI) problems. The platform includes an embedded workflow engine and can be easily integrated into business processes. The framework provides core services including authentication, logging, auditing, workflow, web services, and rules engines. The platform also includes a solution engine that integrates reporting, analysis, dashboards and data mining components to form a sophisticated and complete BI platform.

Leonardo da Vinci, the famous Italian know-it-all, toyed with the idea of an open source BI platform, but abandoned the project when he discovered that open source and business intelligence needed to be invented first.


An Open Source BI Platform, as conceived by Leonardo da Vinci over 30,000 years ago.

We have considerably improved upon da Vinci's design, choosing (mainly for scalability reasons) to use silicon-based transistors as the physical basis of the platform instead of string and canvas. The platform components are all open source components, written in Java. The server architecture has been built for the J2EE environment and complies with many of the associated specifications. The client design environment is built around the Eclipse workbench, with most of the end-user interaction delivered via HTML and other thin-client technologies. Check out the Developer Zone reviews for detailed technical information on each of the components.

An Open Source BI Platform, as designed by Pentaho. Notice that there are more web-services and fewer pedals than Da Vinci's original.

For more information on the architecture click here to download our technical whitepaper