FAQ
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Where are the FAQ's?
Based on this discussion: http://sourceforge.net/forum/message.php?msg_id=3353777
It was determined that we need an FAQ. So here they are.
Where are the 3D charts?
According the Stephen Few (http://www.perceptualedge.com/library.htm), in his book "Show me the numbers": We discovered that 3D charts are kind of a bad practice. They look nice, but don't actually add meaning to charts. So that's why we disabled them as a choice. But we only disabled them from the menu options, and still work. Here, I've listed the available Chart_Types
So what? 3D charts are flashy, and you want them anyway? The 3D types are only hidden as a choice in the UI. All you need to do is add back the 3D options in the chartpropertiesform.xml (http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/openi/openi/web/WEB-INF/openi/chart/chartpropertiesform.xml?rev=1.2&view=markup).
Why don't my measures/calculated measures show up?
- If you're using MSAS, and you just added your calculated measure, might need to restart IIS (where the /xmla/msxisapi.dll is running). Then you should also logout, login again to openi.
- If you're using mondrian, I've noticed some issues with the order in your mapping - measures need to be mapped after dimensions, etc.
How do I create a new public analysis folder?
- Go to tomcat root directory and then into webapps (e.g. cd /usr/share/tomcat/webapps)
- create a folder under openi-projects/foodmart/public/New_Folder
- reconfigure openi-projects/foodmart/project.xml:
<modules> <string>public/Samples</string> <string>public/New_Folder</string> </modules>
Subfolders under public/New_Folder are recursively added to the menu as well. Notice also that underscores are replaced by spaces in the menu display.
How do I configure drillthrough?
- First configure the olap side of things: How_To_Configure_Olap_For_Drillthrough
- then click on the green down arrow on the toolbar
- click the the greenarrows that show up inside of the table cells.
How do I setup tomcat to authenticate using Active Directory?
How do I create a new project?
Also look at http://openi.sourceforge.net/docs/INSTALL.html#project_concept
Why use this over a full .NET solution?
First some background - My company started out developing a full .NET web based business intelligence solution (MSAS, IIS, .NET). We stuck with it for more than a year, and there were serious issues that forced us to move the front end away from .NET. Here are a few:
- licensing - when you're done paying microsoft for licensing the entire stack, cost is a non-trivial issue. Throw in the fact you may want dev sandboxes, dev/stage/production environments, and the cost creeps up on you always.
- browser dependence - most full featured .NET web apps (using jpivot tables) required IE, would not work on firefox, certainly not on any mac browser. It is certainly possible to make your .NET app work on firefox, but some of the more sophisticated widgets (most notably treeviews, pivot tables, drag and drop) were difficult if not impossible to get working on firefox. This was the deal breaker for us and moved us away from .NET on the front. However, we still use MSAS.
- development environment - we had serious problems deploying code, dev environment hygiene. Our developers are scattered around the world, dev environment hygiene is the beginning and the end of properly managing geographically dispersed software teams. With the predominantly .NET platform, we had serious issues with multple dll versions scattered cross various folders on a machine. We want to upgrade a certain dll on our dev environment, on the same machine can we have a stage that is isolated from dev? Very difficult. Then when you want to downgrade that dll? I'm having flashbacks right now, and not the good kind.
- debugging and version control - many files in .NET are generated for you. This is a blessing and a curse. Version control is difficult when something breaks, can you rollback? Fine. But can you analyze which line or which bits of code were changed? We had lots of trouble with this because generated files typically are difficult to analyze changes line by line. Drag in a widget and you get 100s of lines of code, in a place where you used to have a comment. Plus - you'll be lucky just to find the right file that caused the problem.
- open source - the benefits of open source need to be considered as well. Richer requirements, communication with the authors, testing by the community. You want a feature? Post here. Or fix it yourself. I'm sure you've heard it all before.
- improved performance - I went and created a prototype. My hope was to replicate functionality on my closed source .NET software. I figured we changed to using xmla as an interface to MSAS, performance would be worse. I was willing to live with this. Well when I ran it - performance improved, significantly. When I inveiled the prototype to my company - never have I had such a positive response to a demo.
- At this point - openi out of the box - We've opened up our work in openi. This gives you a head start on your BI project. We've spent a lot of time writing authentication code, code to save your analysis to public, personal, shared folders, not to mention that damn tree view navigation. Need a demo? Download and install. Not enough time to download and install? Use our demo server: http://demo.openi.org/openi (tomcat/shallow). Even with the ease of .NET, there is nothing prebuilt like openi.
- side note: nant was a life saver I will say that nant was a life saver when we were doing .NET. It allowed us to run builds nicely (before msbuild was available), automated, wonderful product. Kudo's to anyone that developed that product, and if you're using .NET, please consider building with nant.
When I log into http://host:8080/openi I get a blank page, how to fix?
Here are some general troubleshooting tips, to get you started:
- verify that your user is in the right role:
- tomcat.home/conf/tomcat-users.xml
- Should be in either an admin or manager role.
- this role needs to be granted access in tomcat.home/webapps/openi/WEB-INF/web.xml
- verify that your user has access to the openi foodmart project:
- edit the project user list in tomcat.home/webapps/openi-projects/foodmart/project
- check the tomcat log (paste any relevant exceptions to this forum)
- stop tomcat, remove the tomcat.home/work directory, start tomcat
I have a security database with user names / passwords / roles that I am using for another application and would like to use it for OpenI. How do I do this?
We support any tomcat realm. As of tomcat 5.5, the following realms are supported out of the box:
- JDBCRealm - jdbc driver, direct connection
- DatasourceRealm - uses your connection pool
- JNDIRealm - ldap, active directory
- MemoryRealm - tomcat-users.xml
- JAASRealm - JAAS framework based
Tomcat also allows you to write and configure your own custom Realm. See http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-5.5-doc/realm-howto.html
Tomcat realm grants access to the OpenI application, then you need to grant access to projects within OpenI. See Application Security for more details. We have verified the MemoryRealm and the JNDIRealm.
Have you ever used OpenI with SSL? Do you have any examples of this?
Yes, we used and verified OpenI works with SSL. Probably the easiest way is to configure tomcat over SSL. See here for more instructions: http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-5.5-doc/ssl-howto.html
