Appendix A. Installing and running Mondrian

There are two ways you can get Mondrian to follow along with the examples in this book. The first and easiest is to download the virtual machine we’ve created. The virtual machine runs Ubuntu and has Pentaho CE configured with Mondrian, Saiku, and CTools. It also contains the Adventure Works data running in MySQL and a Mondrian 4.0 schema.

To use the virtual machine, you need to download a copy of VirtualBox, which is available as a free download from www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads. Once you have VirtualBox installed, you can download the Mondrian in Action VM from www.manning-source.com/back/vm.html. Be sure to download the most up-to-date version of the VM. Use VirtualBox’s import capabilities to start the machine. If you’re prompted for a password to log in, it’s mondrian.

Updates to the example platform

At the time of this book’s authoring/review, Mondrian 4.0 wasn’t GA software, along with a variety of other components that were changing as Mondrian 4.0 completed its debut. You must check the forums (www.manning-sandbox.com/forum.jspa?forumID=823) for the latest information for the training platform, because we expect that by the time you read this, the VM and contents may have changed to enhance stability and cohesion.

The alternative is install Mondrian yourself. There are a lot of good reasons to do this, such as the following:

• You want to understand how Mondrian and Pentaho are installed.
• You want a different configuration than the one provided.
• You want to run Mondrian on a server other than Pentaho.
• You want to run locally and not in a VM.

Because there are a large variety options for installing Mondrian, we can’t cover them all. But we can talk about a few that you may find useful when learning Mondrian. We don’t give the instructions for installing each component because they change frequently and the sites have the instructions.

A.1. Somewhere to store the data

The data warehouse can be stored in any database that’s supported by Mondrian. The Pentaho InfoCenter contains a list of databases that are supported at http://mng.bz/2cJM. MySQL and PostgreSQL are popular free databases. The scripts for creating the database examples in this book are for MySQL.

A.2. Just getting Mondrian

If you just want Mondrian, you can download the latest stable version from http://mondrian.pentaho.com. Instructions on how to install it are available at http://mondrian.pentaho.com/documentation/installation.php. If you want the very latest and greatest, you can visit https://github.com/pentaho/mondrian and download from there. Note that this approach requires building the code, but if you’re a developer and don’t mind such things, it’s a great way to stay up-to-date with the most recent developments.

A.3. Mondrian with Pentaho

Many of the examples in this book use Pentaho, and Pentaho will continue to be updated to work with Mondrian. An easy approach, then, is to download Pentaho. You can find downloads of the Pentaho BI Platform at http://community.pentaho.com/projects/bi_platform/. There are two versions: the manual version that you can install into your webapp server and the non manual version that comes bundled with Tomcat and MySQL. This is the quickest way to get up and running. Download the package, and unzip it into a convenient location.

Pentaho 5.0 and Mondrian 4.0

At the time this book was written, Pentaho was on Version 4.8, which didn’t support Mondrian 4.0. If you’re using Pentaho CE and Saiku, this isn’t a major issue, because you can have a different version of Mondrian for Saiku. But Enterprise users can’t use Mondrian 4.0 with Analyzer. Pentaho 5.0 will add support for olap4j but probably won’t incorporate Mondrian 4.0 until Pentaho 5.1.

A.4. Adding C-Tools to Pentaho

You can also install C-Tools with Pentaho. Download C-Tools from WebDetails at www.webdetails.pt/index.html#ctools. The site contains a link to the ctools-installer. This installer is run from the command line and downloads, installs, and configures the various C-Tools. Read the installation instructions closely; it’s not difficult, but you do have to be accurate.

A.5. Mondrian with Saiku

You can get Saiku directly from http://analytical-labs.com. If you just want Mondrian with Saiku, you can download the standalone server. If you prefer to use Saiku with Pentaho, there is a plugin you can download and deploy. Instructions for both can be found on the Saiku site.