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To fulfill these goals, the dashboard will gather data from the various resource into a centralised database, using an [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_Service_Bus ESB] or [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_application_integration EAI] of some sort. A web page will be a view into this database with predefined reports. | To fulfill these goals, the dashboard will gather data from the various resource into a centralised database, using an [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_Service_Bus ESB] or [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_application_integration EAI] of some sort. A web page will be a view into this database with predefined reports. | ||
| - | Candidate reporting | + | Candidate reporting solutions: |
* [http://jasperforge.org/index.php?q=project/jasperreports JasperReports] | * [http://jasperforge.org/index.php?q=project/jasperreports JasperReports] | ||
* [http://www.pentaho.com/ Pentaho] | * [http://www.pentaho.com/ Pentaho] | ||
| + | |||
* [http://www.talend.com/index.php Talend] | * [http://www.talend.com/index.php Talend] | ||
* [http://petals.ow2.org/ Petals] | * [http://petals.ow2.org/ Petals] | ||
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: Extract, Transform, and Load - the process if extracting data from a data source (database, screen scraping, text file parsing, whatever), transforming it to a well understood format, and loading it in your BI engine database or data warehouse. Good ETL solutions provide a nice way for you to connect another database and have new data sucked in at regular intervals, define views into the source data store which you can then query within your BI engine, etc. Pentaho's ETL, [http://kettle.pentaho.com/ Kettle], and [http://www.jaspersoft.com/jasperetl JasperETL], used by JasperReports, both provide (kind of) straightforward ways to hook into a MySQL database. | : Extract, Transform, and Load - the process if extracting data from a data source (database, screen scraping, text file parsing, whatever), transforming it to a well understood format, and loading it in your BI engine database or data warehouse. Good ETL solutions provide a nice way for you to connect another database and have new data sucked in at regular intervals, define views into the source data store which you can then query within your BI engine, etc. Pentaho's ETL, [http://kettle.pentaho.com/ Kettle], and [http://www.jaspersoft.com/jasperetl JasperETL], used by JasperReports, both provide (kind of) straightforward ways to hook into a MySQL database. | ||
; ESB | ; ESB | ||
| - | : [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_service_bus Enterprise Service Bus] - a middleware bus providing a unique interface to applications on the front-end and data stores on the back end. Not really useful for us, as far as I can tell. | + | : [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_service_bus Enterprise Service Bus] - a middleware bus providing a unique interface to applications on the front-end and data stores on the back end. Often used to link up many front-end applications (eg. library, student registration, employee payroll, syllabus management, accounting, supply-chain, student lodgement programmes, etc in a university). Not really useful for us, as far as I can tell. |
| + | ; EAI | ||
| + | : Enterprise Application Integration - using software to integrate different applications together. As far as I can tell, this is a meaningless catch-all phrase for anything from kludges to architected business intelligence solutions. | ||
; DW | ; DW | ||
: Data Warehouse. Basically the same thing as a database, as far as I can tell, but bigger and more impressive sounding. | : Data Warehouse. Basically the same thing as a database, as far as I can tell, but bigger and more impressive sounding. | ||
The goal is to provide a web page summarising metrics about various aspects of the MeeGo project. The data should update regularly - depending on the metric, that could be real time or updated automatically on a regular basis.
The dashboard will track the following community resources, ideally:
The data should also be available for custom reports for usage and analysis in the monthly MeeGo Metrics report published by User:DawnFoster
To fulfill these goals, the dashboard will gather data from the various resource into a centralised database, using an ESB or EAI of some sort. A web page will be a view into this database with predefined reports.
Candidate reporting solutions:
For each community resource, we need to figure out how to ETL the data into a usable form, and come up with appropriate queries for metrics reports, and finally present the results on a webpage.
The area of Business Intelligence is littered with acronyms. Here's a quick overview of the main ones, and how they all fit together.
So, in short, the community dashboard project will likely use an ETL to plug data into an OLAP server, and then use a business reporting engine to query that data and present it in a dashboard.
Support for community infrastructure:
| Software | License | ETL | OLAP database | BI server | Reporting | Dashboard module |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pentaho | EPL | Kettle | Mondrian | Pentaho BI Platform | Pentaho Reporting | Community Dashboard Framework |
| Jaspersoft | AGPL v3 | JasperETL (Talend Open Studio) | JasperOLAP | JasperReports Server | iReports editor | No (commercial only) |