Just got home from the MySQL Data Warehousing and BI Birds of a Feather gathering (BoaF). I'm tired, but my mind is on overdrive. 'Tis a great feeling.

First, I want to thank Lance Walter of Pentaho for introducing Clarise and me to the group as publishers of the OSBI Lens on Squidoo, this blog and the OSS wiki.

Clarise and I had a great conversation with Dr. Jacob Nikom of the MIT Lincoln Laboratory. The conversation ranged from the great Chimay beer that Matt Casters of Pentaho and Lead Architect of KETTLE, brought with him from Belgium, to

• Data Modeling and Relational Algebra/Theory: the integrity of the model
• Bayesian Statistics, Weibull Analysis and Tensor Calculus for mathematical modeling of complex systems [I love it when n-dimensional eigenvalues start floating in front of my eyes]
• Meeting the needs of different types of users: managers, scientists, business folk
• supplementing historical data warehouses with [near] real time data using ESB and dashboards
• data visualization of complex data sets such that the analyses and limitations can be grasped at different levels by different users
• collaboration among distributed workgroups of disparate career backgrounds and cultural pre-dispositions
• use of Second Life and other virtual worlds for collaboration and data visualization
• a calculator is to a computer [think if statment] as a flat file is to a relational database [think where clause]
• early USSR vs. British knock-offs of IBM mainframes
• Complexity as the balance of robustness and fragility

At various times in this discussion, we were joined by Sherman Wood, Director of BI at JasperSoft, and one of the legendary Mondrian developers, Julian Hyde of Pentaho and Mondrian Lead Architect, and Nicholas Goodman Director of BI for Pentaho.

And if you put Nick and dashboards and virtual worlds in the same post, then you have to mention Discoverer meets Duke Nukem.

Jakob, et al, thank you so very much for a great conversation.

We discovered a new OLAP engine, Cubulus, registered on Sourceforge on 2007-03-07. The developer has an interesting presentation on the web, as well. [Just click anywhere on the page that isn't a link to somewhere else, and you'll go to the next slide. Or was that obvious to everyone but me?] Even though the project is pre-alpha, we've added it to our linkblog [look in the side column under OLAP]. The first database supported is MySQL, but they've recently added "hacks" for PostgreSQL support as well.

We were contacted by Stephanie Endlich of Jedox GmbH, who suggested a better description for Palo:

"Palo is a memory based Open Source MOLAP which is able to consolidate data hierarchies in real time and which supports write-back of data. It provides a MDDB and a free Microsoft Excel add-in. For flexible integration Palo offers APIs for Java, PHP, C and .NET. From their homepage... 'Palo is an advanced data store for Microsoft Excel that allows you to handle large amounts of Excel data on a small number of worksheets. In addition, it also allows you to share Excel data real-time with your colleagues.'"

We also have the following from their website on Palo Basics.

"Palo is made for Microsoft Excel. It is a cell-based database that is multidimensional, hierarchical and memory-based. Now what does those terms mean in particular?

"Trying to do Business Intelligence, Financial Analysis, Budgeting or Planning with Microsoft Excel? Looking at Excel workbooks that are difficult to maintain because of their size? Then Palo is for you.

"Palo is an advanced data store for Microsoft Excel that allows you to handle large amounts of Excel data on a small number of worksheets. In addition, it also allows you to share Excel data real-time with your collegues. You get exciting new Excel features without loosing Excel's flexibility. Works with your existing Excel 2000/XP/2003."

Let us know what you think in comments, and we'll update our OSBI Lens' linkblog "Links to OSS OLAP Tools" description accordingly.

Pentaho and Simba Technologies announced today their Spreadsheet Service allowing Microsoft Office users to access Pentaho OLAP using Microsoft Excel's Pivot Tables. Under the terms of their agreement, Pentaho becomes the exclusive distributor of Simba’s Microsoft Excel connectivity technology for use with Mondrian, which will be delivered and branded as Pentaho Spreadsheet Services.

We're trying to get more information about this new service.

[Quick Update:] Lance Walter of Pentaho quickly responded to our request for more information, and provided a link from the Pentaho Analysis page to the Pentaho Spreadsheet Services FAQ.

Spreadsheet Services is basically a client-side library. It sits on the client machine, and translates ODBO calls from Excel’s PivotTable Service into XML/A calls that go to Pentaho Analysis Services / Mondrian. [Pentaho Spreadsheet Services] works with Mondrian “standalone” – meaning Mondrian deployed without any of the rest of the Pentaho platform. So if you’re an existing, happy Mondrian user and want to use Pentaho Spreadsheet Services, you don’t need to deploy or configure the Pentaho platform to use it.
-- From Lance Walter, VP Marketing, Pentaho