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Important: This document is a collection of notes. It is still a rough draft and therefore will undergo many changes prior to being published. The Agile BI project is in early development phase. The UI screenshots included in this document do not reflect the final look and feel of the product.
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Using Pentaho Agile BI, the process above is integrated into one tool. Leveraging the power of Pentaho Data Integration (PDI), an ETL designer is able to massage data as needed, and, based on input from a business analyst, is able to go directly into visualizing and modeling the data, visualizing the data, and finally to providing the data to users for self-serve reporting and analysis purposes. Because the ETL,visualizing, modeling, visualizing, and reporting tools are integrated, it is easy for ETL designers and business analysts to work iteratively and to make needed changes to the data quickly and effectively. This allows BI projects to run more smoothly and cost effectively. Agile BI also allows the ETL designer to add modeling to his or her skill set thus reducing time allotted for proof-of-concept and prototype iterations. So, the process is more like the one described below:
While building a data warehouse, the ETL designer can immediately create a model based on data he or she has already built. The ETL designer can then explore (visualize) the data. For example, in cooperation with a BI analyst, the ETL designer may determine, (using visualization provided by Pentaho Analyzer), that certain dimensions are not applicable or that more hierarchies are required. The visualization step also allows data quality issues to be identified and corrected. At this point the ETL designer can return to PDI Pentaho Data Integration and build additional hierarchies, modelvisualize, then visualize model the data again. Adjustments can be made iteratively until the data is exactly what the BI analyst and end users want to see.
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A BI Model that will be embedded into Pentaho Data Integration is actually a trimmed down BI Server that allows the ETL designer, database adminsitratoradministrator, or IT developer to perform data visualizations on the fly (locally, on the desktop or laptop) without having to publish the metadata to a BI Server; it also allows for quick end-to-end iterations without requiring a full BI Server installation.
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