Pentaho Terminology Project
Thank you for contributing your terms! Read Me First...
Please follow the guidelines below when entering your terms. The Pentaho Community is encouraged to participate and contribute to this effort.
Definitions are not required, but are welcome.
New entries must be displayed in red font and must follow the formatting and style already established in the existing entries. I want to see terms in red boldface letters.
Please tell me what Pentaho product your term relates to. I may not always know.
Append your entry with your name.
Don't worry about alphabetical order. Just plug your new term(s) under "Glossary of Pentaho Terms."
Don't worry about the accuracy of your definition; we will work on getting consensus at a later time.
Terms that are related to what we do, such as industry terms (e.g., LDAP) are also welcome. Definitions that are pulled from sources such as Wikipedia or Webopedia must be identified as such. We cannot tolerate plagiarism.
Don't worry too much about grammar and usage; I will take care of any problems when I create the final draft.
"WAQR" and Other Abominations
I know I am inflicting pain on many of you... but from now on cease and desist from using these abominations:
WAQR — Correct term is Pentaho Ad Hoc Reporting
Pimper — Correct term is Pentaho Metadata Editor or PME
SWAG — Scientific Wild Assed Guess, let's not go there
Note: The term, "Hypersonic," persists despite all efforts to suppress it. The correct terminology is HSQLDB and has been HSQLDB since 2001. See #HSQLDB.
Glossary of Pentaho Terms
Pentaho BI Pillar
Also referred to as a Pentaho module. A grouping of products related by functionality. The six Pillars of the Pentaho BI Project are: Reporting, Analysis, Dashboards, Data Mining, Data Integration and BI Platform. (MBaker)
Pentaho BI Suite
The Pentaho BI Suite is a collective of Business Intelligence applications that include Reporting, Analysis, Dashboards, Data Integration/ETL, Data Mining, and more. There are two versions of the Pentaho BI Suite - the Community Edition and the Enterprise Edition. See also, #Pentaho BI Platform. (MBaker)
Solution
A solution consists of a collection of documents (files) that collectively define the processes and activities that are the system's part in implementing a solution to a business problem. These documents include Action Sequences, workflow process definitions, report definitions, images, rules, queries etc. A solution is represented in the file system as a top level folder in the Solution Repository. (MBaker)
Solution Engine
The BI Server contains the engines and components for reporting, analysis, business rules, email, desktop notifications, and workflow. These components are integrated together so that they can used to solve a BI-related problem. In a solution, the behavior, inter-operation, and user interaction of each subsystem is defined by a collection of solution definition documents. These documents are XML-based and contain the definitions of business processes, definitions that execute as part of processes on-demand, or called by Web services. These activities include definitions for data sources, queries, report templates, delivery and notification rules, business rules, dashboards, analytic views. (MBaker)
Solution Repository
The location where solutions and the metadata they rely on is stored and maintained. Requests made to the BI Platform to have actions executed rely on the action being defined in the Solution Repository. There are two implementations of the solution repository - the file-based solution repository and the DB based solution repository. (MBaker)
Pentaho Deployment
Refers to the in-production installations of Pentaho software. (LanceW.)
Pentaho Enterprise Console
The subscription-only Pentaho Enterprise Console provides you with a central location from which to administer your Pentaho deployments. The console aggregates and simplifies many common administrative tasks such as setting up user authentication, monitoring performance, managing connections, testing configuration, configuring LDAP, and more. (MBaker)
Access Control Lists (ACLs)
In computer security, an access control list (ACL) is a list of permissions attached to an object. The list specifies who or what is allowed to access the object and what operations are allowed to be performed on the object. In a typical ACL, each entry in the list specifies a subject and an operation: for example, the entry (Alice, delete) on the ACL for file XYZ gives Alice permission to delete file XYZ. (excerpted from Wikipedia)
Please provide a short context for where Pentaho implements the use of ACLs. I know that Security is one area. (MBaker)
Action Definition
An XML definition specifying the parameters, resources and settings required for the execution of a task within a single component. The Action Definition defines which component to call, what data to pass into and receive from the component and any component specific information required. An action definition is not a standalone document; it is a part of an Action Sequence. See also #Action Sequence (MBaker)
Action Sequence
An XML document that defines the smallest complete task that the solution engine can perform. It is executed by a very lightweight process flow engine and defines the order of execution of one or more the components of the Pentaho BI Platform. Action sequences are good for sequencing small, linear, success oriented tasks like reporting and bursting. They have the ability to loop through a result set, call another action sequence and conditionally execute components. Action Sequence documents have an ".xaction" suffix. (MBaker)
Action Sequence Editor
The Eclipse Plug-in that allows people to generate Action Sequences (a script that run in the Pentaho BI Platform.) (MBaker)
J2EE
J2EE stands for Java 2 Enterprise Edition. J2EE is a device and operating system independent Java environment for developing and deploying web-based applications. The BI Server can be deployed in various J2EE environments (presently Tomcat and JBoss). (Marc)
JNDI
JNDI stands for Java Naming And Directory Interface. It is used by Java applications as a standardized interface for accessing various directory and name services. In the BI Server, it is mainly used for locating data sources that are bound into the J2EE container for access by a Web application. (Marc)
Java
Java is a computer programming language developed by Sun Microsystems. The BI Server software was developed using the Java programming language. (Marc)
Acegi
We don't use Spring Security yet (plagiarized from mat Lowery's e-mail) (Anthony Carter) From Spring Security version 2.0.0 on, the term "Acegi" should be purged from documentation and user interfaces. (M.Baker)
Regarding Acegi Security, we use the version of Acegi Security when it was referred to as Acegi Security. The change to Spring Security is a relatively recent change. I propose changing the name in the our docs when we upgrade to version 2.0. (We use version 1.0.6.) To demonstrate the confusion that might arise should we change the name, consider the following links. The first one is for Acegi Security 1.0.7 Reference Documentation. The second is for Spring Security 2.0.x Reference Documentation. (M. Lowery)
HSQLDB
HSQLDB is a relational database management system written in Java. It is based on Thomas Mueller's discontinued Hypersonic SQL Project. (Anthony Carter)
The term, "Hypersonic" should be purged from our documentation, file names, and user interfaces. This includes the command that starts and stops HSQLDB... start_hypersonic.bat, and so on. (MBaker)
Data Mining
The process of analyzing data from different angles and summarizing it into relevant information that can be used to increase profitability, cuts costs, or both. Data mining software is one of a number of analytical tools for analyzing data. It allows users to analyze data from many different dimensions or angles, categorize it, and summarize the relationships identified. Technically, data mining is the process of finding correlations or patterns among dozens of fields in large relational databases.
Pentaho BI Suite Enterprise Edition
A process-centric, solution-oriented platform that includes Business Intelligence (BI) components, which enable companies to develop complete solutions to BI-related issues. The Pentaho BI Suite Enterprise Edition includes Reporting, Analysis, Dashboards, Data Mining, Community Forums Interaction, Community Web Documentation (wiki), exclusive access to the Enterprise Edition online Knowledge Base, professional product documentation, and professional support. MBaker on 11/23
Attribute
A property or field of an object in the directory.