Dear Readers,

Version 1.50 of Open Source Business Intelligence Platform Vanilla is available at : http://www.bpm-conseil.org/vanilla150/
MySQL version is available : http://www.bpm-conseil.org/vanilla150/vanilla-tomcat-mysql-1.50-ce.zip
- documentation for installation : http://www.bpm-conseil.org/vanilla150/Vanilla_1.5_Installation_Guide.pdf
- prerequisite : http://www.bpm-conseil.org/vanilla150/Vanilla_1.5_Requirements.pdf
- Post Installation : http://www.bpm-conseil.org/vanilla150/Vanilla_150_Post_Installation_Instruction.pdf

Vanilla 1.50
This major version contains news and enhancements :
- Enhanced Workflow Designer, with support for Orbeon Xform interface, Bursting for Reports, Pools of process per groups ..
- Performances enhancement for BIRT/FreeMetadata PlugIn
- Pregeneration for Reports & Dashboards (using Enterprise Services) to ensure constant response time for end users
- Support of multi join between Schema in FreeMetadata & enhancement of alternate join strategy in “business packages”
- Support for new types of graphic with FreeDashboard (OpenFlashChart, FusionChart)
- Orbeon (Xforms) support to create advanced interfaces (to validate process or to enter datas)
- Various new functions such as multi version for each BI document, using CheckIn / CheckOut features from development studios
- New configuration package to manage & configure Vanilla instances (local or remote) : “Vanilla Configurator”
- New functions available in “Enterprise Service” : variables management, SaaS server management, versionning for BI documents …
- Update of BiLauncher package
- New Business Activity Monitoring interface available in portal to manage user activities & Bi documents workload
- Vanilla Derby package “unzip & Run” (no HSQL version anymore) : http://www.bpm-conseil.org/vanilla150/derby/vanilla-tomcat-derby-1.50-ce.zip
- Web interfaces available in French, English and Spanish
- Multiple database support for Vanilla repository (Oracle, MySQL, PostGreSQL, Derby, DB2, SQL Server)
- vairous enhancements in FreeWebReport & FreeAnalysis : new graphs & reports presentation
- “Home page” is now more easy to customise

Vanilla User presentation is available at : http://www.bpm-conseil.org/vanilla150/BPM_Vanilla_Presentation_User_150_EN.pdf
Vanilla Developer presentation is available at : BPM_Vanilla_Presentation_Developer_150_EN.pdf
Installation documentation, Getting Started Guides and Migration documents from Vanilla 1.3x & Vanilla 1.4x are also available

For each package, a “whatnwew.txt” document is available at root of package

Have Fun,

Patrick

Dear Readers,

Reporting is always a key subject in BI projects. With Vanilla, we have introduced this year the first comprehensive Metadata+Reporting package, available in Open Source at no cost (I make the difference between source availability and cost of package …  please, I like JS … but Metadata+Reporting is only available in JS Pro … which is not  “Open Source No Cost” package)

With Metadata + Reporting, we can address, as explained in part 1 of this post, secured reporting projects. Along with connection against any Ldap server to validate user/pwd (CAS compatibility), SSO support & WebServices remote call to run reports, you can deploy secured reports within minutes on any legacy Web portal (Forget painfull security settings you have to set in xml documents published on portal to secure your report … this is difficult to maintain, and impossibile to document).

In a recent project, we have noticed that the customer has launched its Vanilla reporting project … without using any Metadata. SImply because in was a simple project to make legacy reports available on a portal. It surprised me, but it’s right : no need for Metadata if you want to develop & deploy fast, and have no time for Metadata design. This precision is important : Vanilla can run any kind of reports (IReport & Birt) without Metadata (sorry for those who recently claims the opposite … you’d better kept silence !).

This Vanilla customer is so pleased with Vanilla, that he posted some nice comments on differents blogs. Thanks for this … we all appreciate nice comments (and even bad comments, if they are honest … ). This customer is now trying to replace a commercial reporting package deployed in a commercial department, and I was delighted by his mail yesterday : commercial reports that takes 4 to 5 hours to run, and same report with Vanilla/BIRT takes only3 minutes  ! Wow … yes … I didn’t told you about this : we have optimised Birt engine with Vanilla 1.4x serie …  I’ll write another post on this subject later …

Have Fun !

Patrick

Dear Readers

Just a simple post to inform you that Freeanalysis/Vanilla has been rewarded this month as one of the 10 successfull French Open Source project by l’Informaticien, along with other Open Source projects like Talend, Jonas or ExoPlatform. This is a tremendeous recognition of our investment in Open Source Business Intelligence, and a direct encouragement to do more to achieve our objectives on time. More than ever, Vanilla development Team is devoted to produce a reliable and usable BI Platform and provide support to our Partners.

Thanks to some of the key developers (Gaël, Ludovic, Ronan, Charles, Ansy, Emmanuel …) who have invested their time in this beautifull adventure. This is just the beginning … we just started to move to version 2 of Vanilla BI Platform !

Have Fun !

Patrick

Dear Readers,

In many BI Projects, reporting (along with Dashboard) is a central subject, and reporting tools have to be flexible and powerfull. BIRT and IReport are the 2 clear leaders in the Open Source area to design reports, but in large deployment, nobody will use direct SQL statment as datasource … every BI consultant will look for a metadata component to create & design secured business views.

We recently launched a Reporting Edition for Vanilla BI Platform that leverage IReport & BIRT as standard Open Source Interface to design your reports, using optionnaly FreeMetadata as secured datasource. Vanilla BI Platform provide the comprehensive & secured reporting environment (BI featured portail), that provide all the functions expected (admin tools, deployment interface) while deploying a reporting application.

In Vanilla, FreeMetadata is the piece used to create an abstraction layer between database and report designer. Using FreeMetadata, you can design business views that hide the complexity of your database, setup a new security strategy based on functional groups, design alternative join schema … and finally  use the reporting editor of your choice to create a secured report  … at no cost … Using Vanilla reporting (FreeMetadata) is a must in case you have requirement for using both IReport & BIRT

Bellow some screenshots of the modules, that shows how easy & clean  the integration is :

Integration with BIRT

FreeMetadata as a datasource in BIRT

Deploying Birt report from BIRT into Vanilla

Deploying BIRT Report on Vanilla

Integration with IReport

Integration with IReport requires IReport 3.0. It’s sad that starting with IReport 3.10, the commercial editor has removed the “Plugin” folder …

FreeMetadata as datasource in IReport

FreeMetadata as datasource in IReport

Secured Reports runing from Vanilla BI Portal

With Vanilla, you deploy & run your report in one click … no more complex additional operation to secure & deploy your report outside of the reporting environment.

Report from Vanilla

Have Fun !

Patrick

Dear Readers,

I would like to focus on some of the advanced features of FreeMetadata, our central component that manage our secured business data approach of BI applications.

FreeMetadata is central in Vanilla, and is used as a datasource in following components :

• FreeWebReport (Web Ad-hoc), BIRT and IReport (Report Engines)
• FreeAnalysis Schema Designer (Olap Designer)
• FreeDashboard (Dashboard Designer)
• BI Profiler (Data Profiling & Quality)

Using FreeMetadata is a guaranty that you won’t have to design & maintain again time-consuming objects such as datasource, relation between tables, security, naming on objects …. each time you want to use another design package (olap, report, dashboard … when they are available).

FreeMetadata stores document in XML format and is provided with a toolkit to automate design task (new table, table structure modification) or security update (new group, new security policy).

Using FreeMetadata, you are no longer limited in terms of reporting engine (choose IReport or BIRT and switch at your convenience), no longer limited with the quality of the interface.

In addition to standard basics functionsand concepts  (mapping of physical table into business folder, creation of business model & business packages, creation of simple calculation, multi language support, colum behaviour (measure, dimension), security at row level …), you can find advanced functions such as :

• support for Olap data source : FreeMetadata is not limited to SQL datasource, allowing designer to use FreeMetadata/Olap to draw professional reports
• alternate datasource support : You can define many datasource as “candidate” to be used while running your report, which allow you to run your report against a dev database or production database using a simple “switch”
• column content is secured : in addition to column access, we have a mthod to secure column content (display content or not), based on group security
• Query Builder Package : to test your package before publication on Vanilla repository, tests can be run using any profile and against every declared database

Please Take some minutes to download FreeMetadata, as a key component of the Vanilla Platform

Have Fun !

Patrick

Dear Redears,

While launching Vanilla 1.31 this week, I just think about the reasons we had to launch the Vanilla project mid-07, please find bellow some of those reasons :

1) to be in position to answer to customer’s request and provide customer with the tools they are looking for. This is the No 1 reason, and an everyday position : we are listening to our customers & partners, and are providing the solution they were looking for. Honestly, it was not possible before …

2) because European developer have interesting IT level, we proove it every day … sorry for those who think we can’t achieve a succeefull platform, you find valuable resources in Europe, as you can find also valuable resources in US or in Asia.

3) because everyone told us it’s not possible … well, this is a stupid reason, but I’ve heard this remark so many times. I send my “best wishes” to some peple who officially decided not to use Vanilla because it was a french product or because we didn’t raised funds. We understand it can upset some people to notice that without raising funds, we achieved on time the development of an Open Source BI platform, as opposed to our challengers, which raised millions of USD to promote their product.

4) to have fun in our daily job … well, trying to deploy an american marketing solution was not a must. I don’t think we have fun every day … but globally, situation is more in our hands & mind

5) to write this post … I’m not certain some people will appreciate this post …

6) to read Kris’s comments (private joke for a stupid dishonest man … see www.osbi.fr) … reaction from people from Pxxxxxx is so stupid … please MC and DN : just ignore us as you did, we understand your time is valuable and you have a lot to do …

7) to be certain not to be listed in Gartner’s annuel Quadrant (see Talend comment on Gartner) or my post on decideo. Honestly, people from Gartner … please, last year you missed the Big Crunch in commercial BI and you wrote Open Source BI was not mature enough … how can you put under silence platform such as Talend and Vanilla ?

8 to read answer to Talend post from Gartner analyst … Is this man really aware of what he wrote ? are we leaving in the same world ? For those who just read this just, please note that Pentaho and JasperSoft – 2 american companies – entered Magic Quandrant just 1 year after the launched their solution …

For Yves – to be direct  : to be in an Analyst study, it’s very easy : you just have to pay ! Either direct analysts study cost (!!!), or cross marketing … another wellknown analysis firm (not Gartner) just ask us 26K USD to have Vanilla in their “visionar” list

9) to explain the difference between beeing agressive and upset … but some people are too narrow minded to understand

10) to read your comment on this post … and write another 10 additional reasons

Have Fun !

Patrick

Dear Readers,

Beeing silent for a while, in this first post of “09″ I would like to focus on rapid changes in Open Source BI market : those past months, I have seen every week early Open Source BI customers coming back to commercial solution (usually, early implementation of stone age Open Source  BI solution), along with some Open Source consultant turning back to commercial projects, simply to have stable and reliable long term project. And I don’t see anyone moving on those subjects … just keeping an unbearable silence !

In the same time, because of the financial crisis coming from States, man told us “this is good time for Open Source BI”. Please … open your eyes … no one has no more time to waste with some old fashion platform, even for free.
Everyone is under pressure … customer are looking for mature technologies, and commercial BI companies are making unprecedent discount (an average of 70%, and sometime more !). Open source is not leaving in a bubble, and there is no dream anymore.

Good short-time game for some BI stone age platform is now over …  no open door anymore to sell the company at unreasonnable price … too late, sorry …

What’s next ? We will see 2 or 3 Open Source BI solution survive, and Vanilla will be one of those survivor, simply because the 3 majors companies involved in the Vanilla project are profitable, and our fix cost are supported by projects. This is true : no important marketing investment for Vanilla … no backup from american market analysts ( so what … they just keep silent on vast majority of non-american projects), but important applications already in production, and reliable long-term technology & Concepts (Eclipse/RCP & GWT, BIRT, secure Metadata)

I have no cristal globe,  I just write that situation is moving very quickly, and some editors will have to live with limited resources, reduce cost and learn to be profitable … while customers are upset by marketing annoncement and looking for reliable solution.

Have Fun … year is just starting !
Patrick

Thanks to Hervé for this link (and special thanks to Jean-Paul Jaud for the film)

http://nosenfantsnousaccuseront-lefilm.com/bande-annonce.html

Patrick

Dear Readers,

It seems there are some stress and battle on what we call the “blog area”.

This may be in relation with the global economic situation, that put additional pressure on SMB, especially companies that works in the Open Source market. Far away from banks trouble, at the end of the line, you can find IT system integrators, accounting offices, lawyers and many other services companies that will have direct impact coming from decision such as “we delay our investment”, or “we don’t have budget anymore for this project”.

Last thursday, there were 2 news about direct impact on the crisis :
http://www.newzy.fr/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4059
http://www.lemonde.fr/technologies/article/2008/10/10/facebook-a-le-couteau-sous-la-gorge_1105418_651865.html#ens_id=884081
shortly : one is telling that Venture Capitalist will now be more focused on profitability for the project they backup,  the second news is about some managers of Facebook leaving the company for different reasons (including the postpone of Facebook IPO)
All in one those 2 informations should make many people nervous : those who thought we will get money by a future IPO, those who bet on funds raising to develop their company …

Back on our blog area, I witness some strange posts on Matt and Sylvain’s blog. Purpose on this post is not to relate what happened on their site, and I can understand some reactions. On one blog, Matt wrote a post in reaction with an inconvenient evaluation coming from “nowhere”.  On sylvain’s blog, some people wrote unbelievable wrong sentences about BI platforms, showing to everyone they are narrow minded and have poor knowledge of the other products

Answering to those posts is time & energy consuming … and dont’ bring a lot to discussion (even if I can understand Matt’s reaction in front of some publication, there are limits to everything, including limits to disinformation). Telling nothing about a bad post (and I get so many bad & wrong posts when I tried to talk about “Comercial Open Source” 2 months ago) is not that easy to do, and beeing silent is not an acceptation of the post. This is simply a position I’ll try to keep as long as possible (again, there may be some limits …)

In this strange period, we decided we have more to do than entering into some unlimited battles, focusing on our projects and clients & on our BI Platform is more valuable. But agressive posts will stay forever …

Have Fun !
Patrick

Dear readers,

Over the last past weeks, we have seen so many changes in our financial world, and it will be soon time for post-analysis (even if nobody can tell today that this situation is over)

I just wanted to share with you some thoughts and ideas  about the banks and insurance that feld into bankruptcy :
- what was the Information System running by those companies ?
- how was organised their account department, risk management department, audit company and any other important service company (such as IT integrator, accounting services …)
- when was the last alert raised for each company about the impact ?
- Does some of those companies share board members ?

I’m not certain I will be abble to collect all those informations, even if I’m certain it would provide us with valuable information about the accuracy and  honesty of some of the leading “partners” working with those banks and insurance.

Collateral consequences we may see in the next coming weeks in the IT area :
- some integration projects will be stop (or de facto stopped if the bank has collapsed), leading to lack of revenus for leading ERP (Oracle ? SAP ?)
- thousand of IT people coming back at their local office, because their project have been stopped

What may happen in the Open Source market, where new emerging companies are building both brand and product using private funds from Venture Capitalists ? We may imagine that Venture Capitalist will face problems to raise new funds from their legacy partners, even if there may be more money coming from the pure private market. This should lead some of those companies – in the Open Source BI area for exemple – to be bought in ther next coming months. Officially, we may see “big deal” … but I’m not certain we will see something like Redhat/JBoss or Sun/MySQL deals … no more cash, only paper exchange …

Don’t forget a private company has to be profitable …

Have Fun  !

Patrick