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Open Source OLAP Solutions?

Posted by Cliff on from the where-are-they dept.

webmaven asks: "After reading a thread on the local LUG mailing list on databases, I started wondering if there were any Open Source OLAP (On-Line Analytical Proccessing) database solutions out there. There are plenty of RDBMS OLTP (On-Line Transaction Proccessing) solutions, including MySQL, PostGreSQL, Interbase/Firebird, etc., and also plenty of Open Source Object database systems, but I can't seem to locate any Open Source OLAP databases. If there are any out there, I'd like to hear about them, and if there aren't any I'd enjoy any speculation as to why not."

12 comments

  1. Open vs. Closed-Source by man_ls · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Is open source software always better? It may be in some cases (OpenSSH doesn't have the security flaws that commerical SSH does, MySQL is very powerful, so is PERL), but just because it's free doesn't mean its better. If someone gave you a car for free that you didn't know personally, I'd probably not take it, for fear it would explode under me.

    (Open-Source = Free) != Good software, any more then (microsoft = bad software) automatically.

    Buy an OLAP database engine from a company that sells them, and support people who work for a living.

    JKoebel

    1. Re:Open vs. Closed-Source by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      but open source != free

    2. Re:Open vs. Closed-Source by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      IF you can't afford to buy it, and you want to learn about a technology, then open source = (infinity) times better than closed source.

      While commercial (not necessarily closed source) tools can be more powerful, they are not necessary to learn something.

      Take JSP. Want to learn how to do JSP stuff and set up a JSP application server? Can you afford BEA Web Logic? No? But you can afford Apache + Tomcat...

      Want OLAP? Maybe some of the OLAP vendors provide "developer" licenses ala Sybase and Oracle that are free for their products.

      There is always client-side OLAP: Delphi/Kylix DecisionCube components, Excel PivotTables, Access Crosstab Queries, etc., but these are probably too lightweight.

  2. vaporware and an embryo :-P by ghostis · · Score: 1



    http://www.visionyze.com/news_and_events/press_r el eases/032700.html

    http://sourceforge.net/projects/mondrian/

    --


    Computer Science is all about trying to find the right wrench to bang in the right screw. -T.Cumbo?
  3. SAP DB by duffbeer703 · · Score: 2

    SAPDB would be a good choice.

    It is free. I do not know whether or not it is open source.

    The chances are if you are asking this on Slashdot you are not qualified to modify the source of a database engine anyway, so use SAP DB or pirate Oracle.

    --
    Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
  4. It's a wonder by paulywog · · Score: 2

    I've actually thought about that question before and came to only a limited conclusion. It's one or a combination of a few things probably.

    First is that there are very few individual people that would sit down and say to themselves "For my next hobby project, I want to build a multi-dimensional OLAP database. That'll come in handy in my everyday life... I can plug in my check book numbers and get some GREAT analytics out of it... AND FAST!" And (although I may be wrong), many Open Source projects seem to spawn from the same thing as most inventions - a personal itch. So, if you ever had personal itch (that was strong enough to actually make you write code) to build your own OLAP database, then it would seem that you're the first!

    Also, I'm not sure there's a big enough demand for new OLAP services to warrant that kind of project. If you're using a multi-dimensional OLAP database, you've probably had it for a little while now and already own the software.

    There may be other justified reasons, or it could just be that no one has bothered yet. If you get a project going, though, I'd be interested in hacking on it some!

  5. OLD NEWS, as usual on /. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Okay, before you post your detailed answers on Open Source OLAP solutions, you should really read this article. Then give Mr. Ask Slashdot his answer.

  6. Free OLAP (Not Open Source) by pelxer · · Score: 1

    If it's free that you're looking for, All of Oracle's software is available free for non-commercial use from Oracle Technet. Furthermore, since this is Slashdot, I'm pretty sure the Linux version of Oracle's DB is available free, regardless of use.

  7. Open Source OLAP by lal · · Score: 2

    I don't know of a production quality open source OLAP database. That said, my company is working on a basic set of OLAP class libraries and tools (in perl and php) which enable summarization and reporting of data warehouses. It is not an end user tool, but we've been using it to build query applications on dimensional data marts. Our plan all along has been to release it as open source.

    We have not released yet for two reasons. First, it is not ready yet -- we've seen a lot of alpha quality open source projects languish on Freshmeat because they're just not usable. We want to include enough sample code and documentation to make it a decent starting point for a programmer to build an OLAP web application. Second, this post is the first real interest we've seen in open source OLAP, so we weren't in any real hurry.

    BTW, we use MySQL, because it is fast and reliable for read-only data.

  8. Re:SAP DB (NOT !!!) by mge · · Score: 1

    The chances are if you are asking this on Slashdot you are not qualified to modify the source of a database engine anyway, so use SAP DB ...

    The original poster was talking about OLAP, not DBMS. SAP/DB is a DBMS. You would keep your data in SAP/DB, but you would use an OLAP engine (on top of a Data Warehouse architechture) to extract and anlyse the underlying data.

    In an enterprise strength system you could use... oh, i don't know,... SAP/DB as the underlying DBMS, running on Mandrake, Red Hat, AIX or even the dreaded W2K, with SAP/BW as the Data Warehouse and BEx Analyzer as the OLAP.

    OLAP ne OLTP ne DBMS