Pentaho 7.1 – Demo Install

The newest release Pentaho 7.1.0.0.12 in its community edition is available for download at sourceforge (link) since the 22th of may of 2017.

Pedro Alvez announced its availability the same day with an excellent post in his blog (link). He mentions new visualizations, scalability with big data engines and repository improvements -someday they’ll deliver something you can work confortable with, maybe-, and a new web theme. We’ll see how they are supported in the CE edition. A new mobile access for the EE. The PDI team is exited about its ‘metadata injection’ improvements.

You’ll find it at Sourceforge.net:

  • Web application: Business Intelligence Server [1.1 GB] with 58 closed reports.
  • The best ETL aplication: PDI [904 MB] with 142 closed reports.
  • Report Designer [606 MB] with 19 closed reports in their JIRA system.
  • Pentaho Metadata [787 MB] with 5 closed reports.
  • And Big Data Shims folder.

Steps for backup, install, upgrade to a MySQL local DB are the same that you are already familiar with and has been previously posted in this blog (link) and well documented at the Pentaho Wiki.

Advertisement

Knowage Suite 6.x CE

I found Spago BI version 5.1, that is about two years ago. It was a Complete Open Source BI Sotution, the only one there is, they said. They were proud of it!. And I was waiting for 5.3 to start a series of posts as they announced amazing changes.

On may 4th 2017, @SpagoBI anounced they were starting a #spagobirevolution. The same company (Engineering Group) did an extreme makeover to XU experince and released a Comunity Edition (CE) and an Enterprise Edition (EE) with a Knowage Brand.

What I have seen is that the CE is an interesting product, somewhat crippled as important functionality like scheduling and MDX calculated fields and more are excluded, but lets hope its cockpit designer, metadata, models and widgets, deliver a promising alternative for OS BI data exploration.

Knowage6

Check their overview

Visit their site: http://knowage-suite.com/

Install notes

[Updated on June and December 2017, and May 2018, Sptember 2018]
Knowage has updated its documentation with instructions for windows, linux and DB migration scripts from 5.x [link].

Prerequisites: You’ll need Java JDK 1.8 and JAVA_HOME defined.

  1. Download the Knowage Installer [download page]
    Knowage-6_2_0-CE-Installer-20180809.zip [2.8GB from knowage-suite.com]
    Knowage-6_2_0-RC-CE-Installer-Unix-20180509.zip [2.9GB from one server in ow2]
    Knowage-6_1_1-CE-Installer-Unix-20171213.zip [2.3GB]
    Knowage-6.0.0-CE-Installer-Unix-20170623.zip [1.078GB]
    All-in-One-Knowage-6.0.0_RC_CE_20170429.zip [798mb]
  2. Open a Terminal, create a folder, unzip its content:
    mkdir Knowage6
    cd Knowage6
    cp ../dowloads/Knowage-6_2_0-RC-CE-Installer-Unix-20190509.zip Knowage.zip
    unzip Knowage
    chmod 777 Knowage-6_2_0-RC-CE-Installer-Unix-20180509.sh
    ./Knowage-6_2_0-RC-CE-Installer-Unix-20180509.sh
  3. Run the installer, it will:
    a. Open a welcome dialog. click Next.
    b. Ask if you accept the license agreement. Do it so and click Next.
    c. Ask for your preference on a charting library. Accept the default and click Next.
    d. Ask for six modules to be installed. If all are selected, Click Next.
    e. Select a destination folder. I selected HOME$/knowage6 it will create a Knowage-Server-CE folder.
    f. It will ask for your MySql credentials: jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/, user and password.
       Version 6.1.1 contains MariaDB files, I used my existing version without problems.
       It said that two schemas: kwowage-ce and foodmart-demo will be created

    The installer will extract the server, the .war files and update the database.
    In the final dialog unselect all and click finish to end the installer.

  4. I modified the startup and shutdown scripts to set the correct path to java:
    cd $HOME/Knowage6/Knowage-Server-CE/bin
    gedit startup.sh
    [add your JRE path to the first line like:]
    export JRE_HOME="/usr/lib/jvm/java-8-openjdk-amd64"

    save your script and repeat for shutdown.sh

  5. You might want to increase the session time out from the default 30 minutes.
    Then you should edit ./HOME$/Knowage6/Knowage-Server-CE/conf/web.xml

    <session-config>
      <session-timeout>90</session-timeout>
    </session-config>
    
  6. If you used your MySql/MariaDB instance, you can delete three files:
    rm $HOME/Knowage6/Knowage-Server-CE/webapps/mariadb-10*
  7. Start your tomcat server:
    cd $HOME/Knowage6/Knowage-Server-CE/bin/
    ./startup.sh
    
  8. Start yor browser and set it to:
    http://localhost:8080/knowage

You will find examples on the left menu, enjoy.

If you have problems with the server you can check your ./logs folder.