In this post is described the tasks of the Hands On session about Content Intelligence with AAAR, for the BeeCon ’16 in Brussels. During the BeeCon Hans On Session, a real scenario about analytics on Alfresco is used with custom reports, dashboards and Pivot tables. Below the complete description of the session, starting from the preparation of the environment to the development of the exercises on reports, dashboards and OLAP analysis.
Before diving in the description of the session, let me thank the Pentaho guys and girls (in particular Pedro Alves, Pedro Vale and the Marketing Office) for the sponsorship of the BeeCon and the gadgets sent for the attendees of the hands on session (and the BeeCon in general).
Summary
Setting up Pentaho + AAAR
To setup your own laptop (or server), please follow the instructions below.
Prerequisites
- Java 8 on board. Check it opening a terminal and execute:
java -version
- At least 2GB of available RAM (Operating System apart).
- At least 2Gb of available disk space.
- Supported Operating System: Linux, Mac, Windows
Installing Pentaho with AAAR on board
Get the distro from the Cloud, downloading it from the link below.
Unzip the distro somewhere in your hard drive.
Open a terminal and run start-pentaho
script from Biserver
folder. During the startup, a question at command line will be requested. Press Enter to proceed with Pentaho Server startup.
From here ahead, remember to always check <biserver>/tomcat/logs/catalina.out
for further details about Pentaho and AAAR execution (and issues).
After a couple of minutes, open a browser to the URL below.
http://localhost:8081/pentaho
Use admin
user with password password
.
Now that Pentaho is running, it’s time to add the AAAR datasource in the way you see in the screenshots below. To access to the form, click on File > Manage Data Sources
from the Pentaho User Console, and then click on the cogwheel and then to New connection
.
To make the setup easier, you can copy the settings directly from the description below.
Name: | AAAR_DataMart |
Database type: | Generic database |
URL: | jdbc:h2:tcp:localhost:9092/AAAR_DataMart |
Driver class name: | org.h2.Driver |
User name: | pentaho_user |
Password: | password |
Installing DBVisualizer (optional)
Do you have a DB client into your environment?
If not, you can install DBVisualizer from the distro.
If you are working with a Linux Operating System, execute the command below.
./dbvis_linux_9_2_15.sh
If you are working with a Mac/Windows Operating System, extract the package (tgz/zip) somewhere in your hard drive.
dbvis
is the executable to launch.
To configure DBVisualizator for AAAR, see the screenshots below as configuration. Please remember that Pentaho must be started otherwise the database is not available.
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Put your hands on AAAR
Now that the Pentaho + AAAR environment is ready, let’s put the hands on the Content Intelligence tasks. In the distro package (or into the virtual machine) you can find the Analytics
folder containing the source code of several exercises.
Hands on n.1 – Reports in several formats
Inside the Reports
folder you can find several files with a prpt
extention.
Each file is a Pentaho Report, developed with Pentaho Report Designer.
Let’s view the reports about audits, documents and workflows, published into Pentaho.
To view the report, follow the steps described below:
- Open the Pentaho repository, from the Pentaho User Console, pressing the Browse button.
- Select the
/Public
path. - Upload the
prpt
files into the path. - Open them using the
Open
link. - You can view and download the report in several formats (PDF, XLSX, TXT, etc.)
Below a preview of the report.
Hands on n.2 – Dashboards
Inside the Dashboards
folder you can find three files with a common name AAAR_hands_on
and different extension (cda
, cdfde
, wcdf
).
All the three files define a Pentaho Dashboard in CDE format.
By default the dashboard describes a bar chart presenting the creation dates of the contracts of Use Case n.1 of the speech about Content Intelligence.
Let’s view the dashboard published into Pentaho.
To view the dashboard, follow the steps described below:
- Open the Pentaho repository, from the Pentaho User Console, pressing the Browse button.
- Select the
/Public
path. - Upload the three files with name
AAAR_hands_on
into the path. - Open the
AAAR_hands_on
file with the blu icon, using theOpen
link. - You can interact with the dashboard changing the filters.
Below a preview of the dashboard where we will start to work.
Hands on n.3 – Pivot tables about audits and documents
Inside the Pivot tables
folder you can find two files named AAAR_AuditTrail.xml
and AAAR_Repository.xml
. The two files defines two OLAP HyperCubes: the first on the audit trail, the second on the documents/folders of the repository.
To use the OLAP Hypercubes with Pentaho, you need to install Saiku Analytics from the Pentaho marketplace. In the distro you will find it already installed, but you have to activate it with a (free) community license requested directly to the developer of the software (Meteorite license portal).
To use the hypercubes, follow the steps described below:
- Add the AAAR datasource in the way you see in the screenshots below.
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- Create a new Saiku analytics clicking on
File > New > Saiku Analytics
from the Pentaho User Console. - Click on the
create new query
button. - Select the OLAP HyperCube and start analyzing your data.
Conclusion
Enjoy BeeCon, enjoy Pentaho, enjoy AAAR.