Reporting – Getting Started with Pentaho

20May08

In the three-step waltz of gather, transform, report, it’s that third step that gets the accent. Reporting provides the real value of a form capture system. GATHER is concerned with the larger themes and chords that can orchestrate nationwide public health efforts.

So, selecting a reporting framework was our most important decision. After some review (which I’ll get into later) we chose the Pentaho open source business intelligence suite.

Within GATHER, Pentaho exists as a separate web application, integrated by a common data source, some branding, and custom reports. Before working with the GATHER version, it is best to get started with the standalone Pentaho application to really understand what it offers and how it can be used.

Here are the steps I recommend for getting started with Pentaho:

1. Start-up: download, install and run Pentaho
2. Try it out: browse around through the web application
3. Write a report: use the Pentaho Report Design Wizard to write a report
4. Learn more: refer to the official Pentaho documents

Start-up

1. Download Pentaho Open BI Suite, Pre-configured Installation (PCI) – Hypersonic
   • this is the full stand-alone Pentaho web application, complete with an application container (JBoss)
   • grab version 1.7.0.RC2 for your platform
   • Hypersonic means using HSQLDB, which is much simpler for development and testing
   • yes, the download is giant
2. Download Pentaho Report Design Wizard Software
   • this is the easiest way to get started writing reports
   • grab version 1.7.0.RC2 for your platform
3. Start up the server
   • use the command-line script for your platform (example: “start-pentaho.sh” for Mac OS X)
   • Troubleshooting
     • port 8080 should be available (no Tomcat or other container should be running)
     • JBOSS_HOME environment variable should not be set

Despite many warnings and possibly some errors, a message including the phrase “Pentaho BI Platform server is ready” indicates that the Hypersonic database and JBOSS have both launched, and Pentaho is ready.

Try it out

1. Go to http://localhost:8080/pentaho/
2. Select a user from the “Valid Users” drop-down, then hit the “Login” button
3. From the “Go” menu, select “Solutions”
   • for GATHER, the “Samples” solution is replaced by a “GATHER” solution
4. Browse through the examples

The main areas of interest are the examples in the Solution Browser, and the ad-hoc report generator available under “Go -> New Report”. For GATHER, adding to the pre-written reports is important.

Write a report

The easiest way to get started writing reports for Pentaho is to use the Report Design Wizard . Follow through the step-by-step guide to learn how to use the wizard. The result will be a set of files defining the report and an xaction for integrating the report into Pentaho. This collection must be published into a Pentaho solution. You can try publishing directly to the server, or by following these manual steps:

 

1. In the final step of the “Pentaho Report Design Wizard”, click the “Publish” button
2. Choose “location”
3. Browse to the “pentaho-demo/pentaho-solutions/samples” directory. Create a new directory for your report. 
4. Uncheck “Create JBoss Datasource” 
5. Click the “OK” button

To make the new report visible to the Pentaho Solutions browser, the directory must contain an index.xml file and an index.properties file. Just copy these (and possibly an icon file like file.png) from an existing sample report. Edit the index files to reflect your preferences. Then, follow these steps in the Pentaho web application:

1. Click the “Admin” menu
2. Click the “Update Solution Repository” action
   • click OK in the confirmation dialog
   • click Close in the “Publisher Administration” dialog which confirms that the update is complete
3. Click the “Go -> Solutions”  menu item
4. Look for your report in the list (the name will be the name defined in your index.properties file)

 

Learn more

• Creating Pentaho Solutions - a “solution” is an organizational unit for Pentaho, a workflow containing actions like running a report or emailing the results of a report
• Styling Pentaho – an under-documented how-to for customizing Pentaho. Artifacts which contribute to the style include:
  • pentaho.war – the actual jsp pages of the web application
  • pentaho-style.war – stylesheets and images
  • pentaho-solutions – images and text used by the solution browser
• Pentaho Design Studio – an Eclipse-based suite of editors for creating action documents and reports

This is a very brief introduction to Pentaho Reporting. There is a lot more to explore and leverage for GATHER users, which we’ll cover in future posts.

Cheers,

Andreas

 

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