Vanilla 3.4 – Olap / Maps integration

Dear Readers,

Note : to stupid narrow minded looser who provides stupid comment on this post, we provide both features : geolocalisation and maps display. No confusion. Why it’s always coming from Px ? … just forget us, we have our own product, don’t be jealous, it’s stupid

Other the past few months, I saw some post about Olap/Maps integration, but unfortunatly : either fake post / fake video or simply hard coded integration. So sad, because potential bi developers are in need of clean usable interface, not looking for java code integration. This is a never ending subject of dispute with some persons … but no doubt for if you want to get wide adoption, you need to provide gui designer, not java integration library.

With Vanilla 3.4, we provide an address / maps repository, that can be used to declare either maps or even any kind of building structure (to locate stock or office, for example). Using the address database, along with FreeAnalysisSchema Designer, we have introduce a new concept for dimension/hierarchy : “geolocalisable dimension”, that allow designer to link a dimension with a Map you can choose from the repository.

Now, using FreeAnalysisWeb, user can display Maps choosing dynamically the measur, the level in the geo-dimension and the level in the crossed dimension, along with color coding instruction.

Maps from FreeAnalysisWeb

Maps Selection & Maps Color Coding

Maps Interface

Maps Interface : choosing another level for data measures

Result with new level

Bonus : if you have defined a drill path between 2 maps in your maps repository, you have automatic drill through feature from your master map.

Drill from Europe to France

Drill from France to Rhone

This integration close the loop : Maps is everywhere with Vanilla 3.4, leveraging the new Address/Maps repository

Have Fun !

Patrick

Vanilla and Cocktail

Dear Readers,

Just a simple post about “Vanilla 4 Cocktail”, one of our last package “ready to deploy”. You can find a simple page that describes the package here.

I wish all the best to the new Cocktail Office company that will push the Cocktail project, because the project is important and the people are great ! We really like to work with Jean-Marc and his team … Universities and High School need the Cocktail project to downsize and manage their It infrastructure.

Vanilla4Cocktail is ready to deploy, and contains reports, maps, cubes, dashboard about the most important Cocktail module (school management, accounting, salary, budget …). Using our package, no need anymore to invest into commercial Bi software … and best of the bread, you can deploy your reports to everybody (teacher, student) at no additional cost !

Important subject with Vanilla4Cocktail is the security : using our latest package – Tango – that take in charge database authentification synchronisation – we provide a cartridge “Cocktail security database ” to replicate the Cocktail users & groups into the Vanilla database, using contextual filters (which means you don’t have to rebuild your security strategy with Vanilla, but instead you can directly use the Cocktail security with Vanilla)

Have Fun !

Patrick

Vanilla 3.4 – Maps Everywhere

Dear Readers,

I just get the second release for Vanilla 3.4, that comes in time with consistent new features. First of all, we still target to delivere version 3.4 in April, as announced previously … always a good sign when the editor is keeping his initial engagement …

This version provides maps integration everywhere, with 2 kinds of Maps support : Flash (FusionMaps) and GoogleMaps. Thansk to Pallav (FusionMaps) and his team, we have a consitent set of co-branded Maps, and especially 3 Top-to-down Maps : World-France-City (Paris, Lyon) that allows us to demonstrate the Maps-Drilldown feature.

Maps are managed in our address/maps repository, inside a new module – Norparena – that provides Alert Management, Content Management, Forms Management and Address/Maps Management. There is a slight difference between GoogleMaps and Flash Maps : with GMaps, we manage point, as opposed to Flash Maps where we manage Cells (workaround for performance issue when drawing cells in GMaps), but except this difference, the mechanism is the same, whatever the maps type.

After, you can design & display Maps using Birt (we provide native PlugIn integration), FreeDashboard and even FreeAnalysisWeb (Olap View/Maps integration). It’s again very simple with the Vanilla modules … and result is attractive.

WebDashboard with Maps & Graphs, with dynamic color coding

Another screenshot from the updated documentation … just because I like this serie of screenshots … (Thanks Charles !)

Have Fun !

Patrick

Vanilla 3.4 – Wide Integration

Dear Readers,

The new Vanilla 3.4 version provides continuous integration between modules, using Wizard and leveraging existing features. Before the Olap/Maps integration (next post, I promise), just have a look at the mechanism for Olap/Dashboard integration.

The business case is very common : a user is exploring a cube, and he want to save some cube’s view into a dashboard, for immediate publication and later reuse.

First, we have some interesting features in FreeAnalysisWeb, such as the possibility to save a view. This feature is there for years now, but we have added a usefull method to record views : snapshot control. While exploring your cube, you can snapshot the current view and after an full session, you can decide which snapshot you will save as views.

Note : snapshot is like saving a view, except that saving a view is a longer process compare to snapshot (shich just ask for the name of the view)

Taking a snapshot of the current view

Second interesting feature : a view can have one or many prompts. Then, when you open a view, you are prompt for a value (member value). Each prompt is associated with a list of value (this is the list of member for the current prompted level !)

Report with prompt on product

Saving the report in the snapshot list

When you think you are done with your browsing session, you can recall the snapshot list and select the snapshot view to save :

Interface to save the snapshots

From FreeAnalysisWeb, we have added a FreeDashboard Wizard control to allow user to select which views he want to embed in the new Dashboard, with a preview interface before publication on the portail. You can notice that views with prompts are well supported, the list is embeded into the Dashboard panel.

Dashboard Wizard from FreeAnalysisWeb

Dashboard Preview

You can preview the Performance Dashboard (multi panels)

Saving the Dashboard is so easy, and result is available to every user in a couple of minutes.

Saving Dashboard in the Portal

Result from Vanilla Portal

Dashboard Panel for view with prompt

Best of bread, if you want to modify the Dashboard, you can use FreeDashboard Designer, and if you have an Android (Tablet, smartphone), you can directly access the Dashboard using your tablet !

Have Fun !

Patrick

When you think you are done with your browsing session, you can recall the snapshot list and select the snapshot view to save :