Chapter 2. Mondrian: a first look

This chapter is recommended for

In the previous chapter, you saw how our fictional Adventure Works company could benefit by moving from a SQL-based reporting solution to one based on OLAP and Mondrian. Adventure Works has now implemented Mondrian inside of Pentaho, an open source business analytics suite. In this chapter, we’ll take a look at how they implemented Mondrian and how they can use it for analysis. We’ll start with a brief overview of the architecture, and then we’ll see some types of things you can do with Mondrian. Finally, we’ll talk about how the data gets from your operational systems into Mondrian for analysis.

In addition to learning how Adventure Works is using Mondrian for analysis, you’ll be introduced to some user-interface tools that make analysis with Mondrian as simple as dragging and dropping. After reading this chapter, you’ll understand the parts that make up a typical Mondrian deployment and how data is organized and described.

2.1. Mondrian’s role in analytics

As we stated in chapter 1, Mondrian is an engine for analytics. It accepts analytical queries and converts them into relational queries, returning the data in a form that supports analytics. But for Mondrian to be useful to business users, it needs some sort of interface and application to run it.

2.2. Running and using Mondrian

2.3. Multidimensional modeling

2.4. Getting and organizing the data

2.5. Summary