Pentaho Analysis Viewer User Guide

Last Modified on September 17, 2007

Pentaho Analysis Viewer User Guide

Copyright © 2007 Pentaho Corporation. Redistribution permitted. All trademarks are the property of

their respective owners. For the latest information, please visit our web site at www.pentaho.org

PentahoTM Pentaho Analysis Viewer User Guide 2

Contents

Contents................................................................................................................. 2

Introduction............................................................................................................ 3

Getting Started with the Pentaho PCI .................................................................. 3

PCI Home .................................................................................................... 3

Browsing the Solutions Repository ................................................................. 3

Steel Wheels Analysis Samples............................................................................ 4

Business Overview of Steel Wheels ................................................................ 4

Pentaho Analysis Views............................................................................................ 5

Interacting with the Data Grid............................................................................. 5

Analysis View Toolbar......................................................................................... 6

Save and Save As ......................................................................................... 6

OLAP Navigator ............................................................................................ 6

MDX Query .................................................................................................. 9

Configure OLAP Table ..................................................................................10

Show Parent Members .................................................................................12

Hide Spans..................................................................................................13

Member Properties ......................................................................................14

Suppress Missing Rows/Columns...................................................................15

Swap Axes ..................................................................................................15

Swap Axes ..................................................................................................16

Drill Buttons ................................................................................................17

Drill Through...............................................................................................18

Show Chart .................................................................................................19

Chart Config................................................................................................19

Configure Print Settings ...............................................................................21

Print to PDF ................................................................................................21

Export to Excel ............................................................................................21


Introduction

This document is intended to provide business users with an introduction to the use of Pentaho Analysis

Views, based on the JPivot project (http://jpivot.sourceforge.net). JPivot is a Web-based, 100% thin client

interface for interactively analyzing multidimensional data sources including Pentaho Analysis (Mondrian).

This document focuses on the most commonly used features of JPivot using examples found in the Steel

Wheels Analysis Examples of the Pentaho Pre-Configured Installation (PCI). It is not intended to cover all of

the features of JPivot.

Getting Started with the Pentaho PCI

The Pentaho Pre-Configured Installation (PCI) is a pre-configured and deployed instance of the Pentaho

Open BI Suite using JBoss. This document uses several of the samples contained in the PCI to illustrate

features of Pentaho Analysis Views. To download the PCI, visit http://www.pentaho.org/download/. This

document assumes you are using the default configuration of the PCI.

PCI Home

Begin by launching the PCI login page found at: http://localhost:8080/pentaho. From the Valid Users list,

select user Joe and click the Login button. This brings you to the PCI home page:

Browsing the Solutions Repository

From the main menubar, choose Go|Solutions to begin browsing the PCI’s solutions repository. This is

where you can browse all of samples that ship with the PCI.


Steel Wheels Analysis Samples

This document will refer to samples based on the fictitious company Steel Wheels:

Business Overview of Steel Wheels

• Company Name: Steel Wheels

• Primary Business: Model Toy Wholesale

• Other Business Facts

o Product lines include: cars, trucks, motorcycles, ships, trains and planes

o Customers include retailers worldwide

Navigate to the Steel Wheels Analysis view examples by clicking on Steel Wheels, then click on Pentaho

Analysis.

This folder contains several examples of Pentaho Analysis Views that highlight a variety of ways to analyze

data using JPivot. Choose The Steel Wheels Analysis Icon.


Pentaho Analysis Views The first screen you see after selecting Steel Wheels Analysis is a basic Pentaho Analysis View built using

JPivot. The JPivot interface is a 100% thin client solution that can easily be customized to match your

company’s look and feel or to disable functionality that unnecessary for end users. The User Interface

consists of a toolbar for configuring settings related to how data is visualized and interacted with, and an

interactive data grid.

Looking at the example above, you see the data is made up of several dimensions including Markets,

Customers, Product, Time, Order Status and Measures. Dimensions are natural hierarchies that exist within

your business which we can use to slice and dice the data to get different perspectives of the information or

drill down for additional details. The Measures dimension is a special dimension that contains all of the

numbers (or facts) you use to run your business. Our Steel Wheels example contains two measures,

Quantity (seen above) and Sales. For more information on how to design a multidimensional cube in

Mondrian, visit: http://mondrian.pentaho.org/documentation/doc.php.

Interacting with the Data Grid

Drilling allows users to expand the hierarchies within a dimension to uncover additonal detail. To drill down

on a dimension member, simply click the plus sign next to the member name you wish to drill on.


After drilling down on a particular member, you will notice that the plus sign becomes a minus sign.

Clicking on the minus sign allows you to collapse the expanded level. In the example above, we have

expanded the Market and Customer dimensions to reveal the members in the first level of each dimension.

The toolbar contains several options for controlling the drill method including expansion drilling and member

drilling. We will cover each of these options in detail later in this document.

Analysis View Toolbar

The Analysis View toolbar contains various settings for controlling the data grid display, the drill method,

charting, and more. This section will describe each toolbar item in detail.

Save and Save As

The Save button allows you to save any changes made to the current Analysis View. The Save As button

will allow you to save changes as a new Analysis View.

OLAP Navigator

The OLAP Navigator is used to define the overall layout of your query like which dimensions to display as

rows, which to display as columns, and which members to filter on.

In the example below, we have placed the Customers, Product, Time and Order Status dimensions in the

rows area of the view. We have placed the Measure dimension in the columns area of the view. Finally, we

have placed the Markets dimension in the filters section of the view and selected to filter on the member

‘APAC’. This means that as users interact with the data grid, all queries will return only facts related to the

APAC region.


OLAP Navigator Buttons

Icon Description

Move Dimension to the Columns area

Move Dimension to the Rows area

Move Dimension to the Filters area

Move Dimension Up or Down within the current area

Laying Out Your Dimensions

Pentaho Analysis Views contain three areas in which to place your dimensions: rows, areas and filters. The

Filters area, also referred to as the slicer, allows you to filter data based on a dimension member not seen in

the row or column area of the view. Moving a dimension from one area of the view to another area is as

simple as clicking on the appropriate icon next to the dimension you wish to move. For example, to move

the TIME Dimension from the Rows area to the Columns area, click on the button next to Time.

Time has now moved to the top, and drills across the page.


Browsing Dimensions

You can also define specific selections within a given dimension using the dimension browse feature of OLAP

Navigator. To browse a specific dimension, simply click on the dimension name in OLAP Navigator. Here is

an example of browsing the time dimension to select all four quarters of the year 2004:

Creating a Filter Example

In this example, we will filter all data on the APAC member from our Market dimension. In OLAP Navigator,

click on the icon next to the Market dimension in order to move this dimension into the filter area.

Next, click on the Market Dimension to open the dimension browser. Click the + symbol next to All Markets

to display its children. Then select the radio button next to APAC and click OK to finish making your

selection. Your OLAP Navigator should now look like this:

Click OK to exit the OLAP Navigator and notice that your Data Grid is updated to reflect your new layout and

selections. The filter we defined can be seen in the Slicer panel just below the Data Grid.


MDX Query

Pentaho Analysis (Mondrian) uses the MDX query language for defining multidimensional data queries. The

MDX Query Editor button on the toolbar opens a dialog allowing you to view and/or edit the MDX for the

current query. The following image shows you an example of an MDX query and its resulting data set.

MDX is a very detailed and expressive query language. The creation of MDX queries is beyond the scope of

this document, but there are numerous websites which provide good tutorials on creating MDX queries.


Configure OLAP Table

The Configure OLAP Table dialog provides you with the ability to set the sort display type and order, apply

top/bottom filters based on rank, and show or hide member properties.

Sorting

The Sort Mode field will allow you to set the sort order, ascending or descending along with the display

type, single column (keep) or multicolumn (break).

Top/Bottom Counts

To apply a top or bottom count in your display, you must first sort your rows based on a specific measure.

For example, say we wish to find our top 5 customers in North America based on the quantity of items sold.

We start with a list of all customers in North America, like this:


Next, we need to sort our values based on the Measure we want to apply the top/bottom filter on. Click on

the blue dot in header of the Quantity column to apply a descending sort on Quantity.

Note: clicking again would the rows in ascending order, and clicking a third time would bring it back to

default sort order.

Next, open the Config OLAP Table column, and choose Top Count from the Sort Mode drop down. Then

enter ‘5’ in the Number of Rows for Ranking input field and click OK. You should now see a list of our top 5

customers in North America based on quantity like this:

Note: Your data rows must be sorted on a given Measure in order for the Top/Bottom counts to work

properly.

Show Member Properties

The Show Member Properties check box will allow you to show or hide any member properties you have

defined in the current OLAP model. For more information on defining Member Properties, please refer to

the Modrian documentation on writing a Mondrian schema found here:

http://mondrian.pentaho.org/documentation/schema.php


Show Parent Members

The Show Parent Members button provides you with the ability to display the parent member(s) of a query

in their own row or column. Here is an example of a query with Show Parents disabled:

And here is the same query with Show Parents enabled:


Hide Spans

Hide Spans will prevent the display of repeating headers when multiple dimensions are nested on a common

access. Here is an example query with Hide Spans disabled:

Here is the same query with Hide Spans enabled:

Note the headers for the Markets dimension are no longer repeating.


Show Properties

The Show Properties button allows you to toggle the display of Member Properties in your Mondrian Cube.


Suppress Missing Rows/Columns

There are times when you want to see zero rows in your reports, but usually you don’t want to see the row

when all the values are zeros. Here is an example of a query with several zero rows without suppression:

Here is the same report with zeros suppressed:


Swap Axes

Swap Axes is one of the most powerful features of Pentaho Analysis Views. It provides uses with the ability

to pivot the data, swapping dimensions/members from the rows area with the dimensions/members in the

columns area of your view. Looking at the example below, you can see the columns area contains our

Time and Measures dimensions, while the Rows area contains Markets, Customers and Product dimensions.

Clicking the Swap Axis button will pivot the entire view:

Here is the resulting view after pivoting the data:


Drill Buttons

There are three different drill modes available in Pentaho Analysis Views which control the behavior of the

query when a user clicks to drill down on a particular member.

Icon Drill Mode Description

Drill Member

In this mode, all instances of that member will be expanded (multiple instances

of a member would be displayed when you have nested dimensions on an

axis).

Drill Position In this mode, only the instance of the member clicked on will be expanded,

even if there are other instances of the same member.

Drill Replace In this mode, the member drilled on will be replaced by its children members.

Drill Member vs. Drill Position Example

The following example is provided to help descibe the differences between the Drill Member and Drill

Position modes. In each case, we will begin with the query shown below, then drill on the In Process|All

Years member:

Drilling on ‘In Process | All Years’ with in Drill Member mode results in the following table:


Drilling on ‘In Process | All Years’ with Drill Position mode results in the following table:

Note: you can see that in Drill Position mode, only the All Years member related to the In Process member

is expanded vs. expanding all instances of the All Years member as seen above in Drill Member mode.

Drill Through

In OLAP Analysis, users are typically viewing summary level information that has been aggregated from the

detailed facts. The Drill Through button will turn on drill through indicators ( ) in the data grid allowing

users to click and view the individual details (facts) that resulted in the aggregated cell value. In the image

below, you can see the drill through report for the total sales of All Motorcycles in Japan:

Note: The page controls at the bottom of the drill table allow you to move forward and backward between

pages, or you can jump to a specify page by entering the page number in the ‘Goto Page’ field and clicking

.


Show Chart

The Show Chart button will insert a chart for the current query.

Note: not all reports make good Charts. Summary reports tend to give the best results.

Chart Config

The Chart Config button opens the Chart Properties dialog providing the ability to configure various chart

properties such as chart type, formatting, size, show/hide chart legend, and much more. Here is a

screenshot of the Chart Properties dialog:


Here is the list of the chart types currently available:

• Vertical Bar (2D and 3D)

• Horizontal Bar (2D and 3D)

• Stacked Vertical Bar (2D and 3D)

• Stacked Horizontal Bar (2D and 3D)

• Vertical Line

• Horizontal Line

• Vertical Area

• Horizontal Area

• Vertical Stacked Area

• Horizontal Stacked Area

• Pie Charts by Column

• Pie Charts by Row


Configure Print Settings

The Configure Print Settings dialog provides the ability to define print related settings like a report title,

Page Orientation, Paper Size, and whether or not to print the Chart on a separate page. Settings are stored

for the current user’s session. Modify these settings and click ok to save.

Print to PDF

Print to PDF will generate a PDF version of the Analysis View based on the current Print Settings.

Export to Excel

The Export to Excel (tooltip: Start Excel) will launch Microsoft Excel and render an Excel version of the

current Analysis View.


Creating a New Analysis View The easiest way to create a new Analysis View is to begin with an existing Analysis View, modify the query

and other view settings, and then perform a Save As to create a new view. This section describes the steps

to create a brand new Analysis View from scratch.

This section assumes that you have a basic understanding of the Pentaho Platform and Action Sequences.

If you are new to the Pentaho platform, please review the Creating Pentaho Solutions guide prior to reading

this section. To create a brand new Analysis View, you will also need to download the Pentaho Design

Studio. The Creating Pentaho Solutions guide and Design Studio software can be downloaded from the

following location: http://www.pentaho.org/download/.

In the Pentaho Design Studio, begin by clicking the ‘New Action Sequence’ option on the Pentaho Design

Studio’s plug in menu ( ).

In the Container field, enter the location to the solution and path for where you want to store the Analysis

View in the Pentaho Solutions Repository.

Enter the name of your Action Sequence in the File name field. Be sure to keep the extension .xaction so

that the file can be correctly identified by the Pentaho Platform.

On the General Tab, enter the Title for your Analysis View and any of the other optional fields to describe

your view.

Next, click on the Define Process tab at the bottom of the Design Studio.


Documents

Pentaho Analysis Viewer User Guide