This is a great article, and I feel it does capture the movement we're seeing with data science/BI.

We are moving beyond visualization (the third skill) and focusing heavily on storytelling. APIs have already given us the tools to visualize our data. It certainly is storytelling, but we are extending even beyond visualization. Recently, the website Last.fm hired a data science expert to make sense of their data. The position heavily focused on storytelling versus statistics, and I bet a lot of smaller companies are going to make the same jump.

Andrea,

Thank you for the more comprehensive link.

Vladislav,

We've been aware of the OSS Palo for Excel for some time, but haven't kept up with Jedox's other OSS for BI. We'll add these products to our OSSLinks, shown in the sidebar to this blog.

Thank you for taking the time to update us.

Joseph,
for a complete and up to date list of all the analitical engines supported by SpagoBI you can look here:

http://www.spagoworld.org/xwiki/bin/view/SpagoBI/TheSuite

Andrea

Hi Joseph!
Did you have a look at our Palo Suite? Plays well with all of the above and is OS too - http://www.jedox.com/en/products/Palo-Suite.html

Regards,
Vlado

As you know, you have to be careful with vendor claims. For instance, SAS described, at the Aster Big Data Summit in Washington DC in May, the ability to run a version of the SAS Data Step on Aster nodes. SAS described this as if it is shipping. In fact, it will not ship this year.

Andrea,

SpagoBI supports many more things than I can fit in the table. ;) Is there a better link than the one that I gave to list them all?

Hi Joseph, gr8 post! Thanks also to have mentioned SpagoBI and its capabilities in terms of location intelligence. Just one thing about the teble: SpagoBI support also PaloPivot (aka JPalo web client) as OLAP client.

Andrea Gioia

Seth,

Thank you for correcting my misunderstanding. I had thought I heard the words "column-store" at the Aster Big Data Summit, but perhaps, it was my own internal filter, as when I read the following from their FAQ, and somehow saw column-store:

It provides a very strong data management layer - ANSI SQL interface, ACID transactions, Information Lifecycle Management, indexes, cost-based query optimizer, compression, security and other database features. It provides a very strong application processing framework - multiple language support, workload management, security, statistics collection, error logging and other application server features. It is architected to co-locate both data management and application processing as first-class citizens on the same infrastructure.
-- What is Aster Data nCluster?

I'll correct this in the main post.

Joseph, one small technical point: Aster Data's nCluster stores data by rows. The DBMS is not a column store.

Seth

Hello,

While a little lengthy, I like your post - you accurately capture the gap between what most people think of when they use the phrase "open-source" and what the open-source world thinks. You do try to break these misconceptions and I know, from experience, that this is not simple.

I was talking to someone recently. He's a CIO and took over my previous role at a governmental organisation. His first reaction upon hearing that I'm in open source was, "Isn't it true, though, that open-source comes with lots of hidden costs? Isn't open-source more expensive than closed-source in the long run?" It took me a fair amount of arguing and I hope I got the full thrust of my message through.

Working for a company that specialises in open-source technologies and which works with open-source vendors, I can confirm your statement that open-source is not created by unsociable types in their bedrooms. While some people still do that (and lots of closed-source companies started that way too), most of the companies that we deal with are professional setups with slick operations and marketing machines that can rival their closed-source competitors'. And we all wash our own clothes ;-)

Antoine

Kuldeep,

Thank you for the information. I'm afraid that we don't have any further information beyond what is on the KETL.org documentation area. We've deleted the broken links and added a link to the documentation section of KETL.org in the post.

Hi,

KETL for Data Integration,
KETL XML Steps Overview

I tried downloading above PDF's, but looks like they are not the location. also I do not see developer guide on KETL.org. Do you have link from which I can download the documentation of KETL

Commercial seems to have come to mean that one must pay to use the product; non-commercial is the opposite: the product is free for use. Open Source of course, means that one has access to the source code, and depending upon the license, certain rights and responsibilities associated with that access and any changes to the source code that one might make. There are commercial open source products and non-commercial closed source or proprietary products. Postgres is about as open and free as they come. MySQL is dual-licensed. Take a look at the side bar for open source databases, data warehousing specific DBMS, and supporting companies and communities. Take a look at what can be downloaded and what must be purchased and you'll get a feel for commercial open source, open core and completely F/LOSS DBMS.

What are the different between commrecial & non commercial for DBMS

I look forward to your next post. In addition to Mr. Robbins you should talk to someone in a commercial open source organization. It would provide a very different perspective.

OH - I just wanted you to know that I'm reading your post - several times. :) It's good to have a discussion with you. You may think you go on - but to me I am very grateful that you are taking the time to aid and guide my education!!!!

Give me a little bit of time to go through your links. My next blog, I hope, is after a conversation with Aharon Robbins (publishing name is Arnold Robbins, I think) holder of "awk" related stuff.

I think my shock from Stallman is wearing off and I am once more excited to learn about open source.

All the best. I'll answer as soon as I can think.
Shoshana

Thank you for the self-promotion ;) I don't see any indication that InfoCaptor is open source. You do have some free dashboards for download, but I don't see one specifically for Bugzilla. Please correct me if I'm wrong on either.

You could use InfoCaptor to connect to Bugzilla database and create Desktop Dashboards

KETL documentation has been updated and moved to the KETL.org site.

For more information about KETL, please visit http://www.ketl.org/