JasperSoft improves usability of open source BI suite
Published:31-October-2007
By BR staff writer
JasperSoft has enhanced its open source business intelligence suite with new usability and back-end integration features that are intended to push the software into more user hands and broader data environments.
The San Francisco-based company has focused on cosmetic user interface features in version 2.1 of its namesake BI Suite that are designed to bump up their self-serve BI productivity.
Included as part of the release are new Ajax-based ad hoc charting and cross-tab analysis tools, JSR 168 portal-deployable dashboards, and a vastly improved data warehouse security scheme. JasperSoft has also paid great attention to improving what it calls "the out-of-the-box experience" by providing multiple dashboard samples, enhanced wizards, additional ad hoc report themes and a new "Welcome" page with enhanced user tools
At the back-end, JasperSoft has also enhanced the suite's ETL component with a new multi-user repository, monitoring tools and support for slowly changing dimensions. The ETL tool is based on a licensing agreement with open source ETL firm Talend, and is branded as JasperETL.
For developers the modular Java APIs of JasperSoft's BI suite have been tweaked to allow the software to be more easily embedded into operational business processes and OEMs There is a new "ad hoc launcher" API that lets users perform ad hoc query and analysis from another application. New web services for scheduling and a more simplified methodology for custom data source specification has also been added.
JasperSoft's BI Suite now boasts over 7,000 commercial customers in over 90 countries worldwide. The suite consists of an interactive reporting server, graphical and ad hoc report design interfaces, OLAP analysis, an ETL tool for data integration, and a Java reporting library.
