Does anyone have experience with BI tools like: Pentaho or JasterReports?

Does anyone have experience with BI tools like: Pentaho or JasterReports?

i le Nadav Kavalerchik -
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Hello ata

We are currently using blocks/configurable_reports to generate fixed and semi dynamic (related to Course or viewing User) reports. It is very useful and there are several useful reports that are shared on: http://docs.moodle.org/23/en/ad-hoc_contributed_reports

We are an ISP for several Academic institutes, that host Moodle and other tools for those institutes.

Now, we wish to expand the scope of the reports in two directions:

  1. Consolidate similar reports which gather information from several Academic institute (our clients)
  2. Per institute, run BI analysis in conjunction with other SIS and CMS tools we use.

Does anyone have experience with BI tools like: Pentaho or JasterReports that they can share?

Nadav ata

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In reply to Nadav Kavalerchik

Re: Does anyone have experience with BI tools like: Pentaho or JasterReports?

i le john whitmer -

Thanks for sharing - I've tried Pentaho, but it seems like they're putting their efforts into the "premium" version of the application.

I've heard that talend is a good open source alternative.  Datameer just released a free version for the education community (and has a trial version), but not sure if that would help you as a services provider.

Personally, I've been using a combination of non-open source products Tableau (for visualizations) and STATA (for stats. analysis).  Would like to move toward more open source apps for scalability and dissemination.

Best, John

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In reply to john whitmer

Re: Does anyone have experience with BI tools like: Pentaho or JasterReports?

i le Nadav Kavalerchik -
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Hi Jhon,

Thank you for sharing your thoughts! 

I was not aware of Telend and Datameer. both look very interesting. ( I am currently downloading Datameer )

Since I am promoting the use of Open Source, I do not see much choice (for me) fa'aivi-le-mata

Last, I would like to share in a nice link I found: BI Comparison matrix for Pentaho, BIRT and JasperReports.

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In reply to Nadav Kavalerchik

Re: Does anyone have experience with BI tools like: Pentaho or JasterReports?

i le Gavin Henrick -
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Yes, I have experience of JasperReports.

JasperReports is good and has many options however, there are limits to how you can use it, however it does offer print-perfect reporting, so is very useful for some types of reports.

One of the points I would recommend considering is whether one should use a BI tool directly on a live Moodle site or should one have either a slave-clone or even a fully warehoused copied which has been ETL-ed so that heavy queries do not overload a live site.

Of course if your server hosting the Moodle has has been specced to handle the live site and the extra reporting too should not be an issue.

As they are not PHP, one also needs Java experience and hosting environment.

Another issue in using an external reporting tool, is that who permissions, capabilities on who can run what reports, perhaps with hierachy driven from Moodle etc...

Personally speaking, If given a choice of using JasperReports for Moodle or just building a reporting interface where you can leverage more complex reports, and contextual (based on user permissions / capabilities) - I would not use Jasper.

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In reply to Gavin Henrick

Re: Does anyone have experience with BI tools like: Pentaho or JasterReports?

i le Michael Penney -

I've been there ata - actually I've seen people spend a huge amount of time on both Pentaho and on Jasper, and not get all that much out of them.

It turned out the hardest part is writing scalable queries that return useful data, Jasper has nice tools for making colorful displays of the data once you get it out, but PHP with a graphics library isn't so bad for that either. 

The direction I like best is to create the queries, put the results in a denormalized database optimized for read, and then use some of the nice dashboard tools to generate  user friendly/attractive outputs.

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In reply to Michael Penney

Re: Does anyone have experience with BI tools like: Pentaho or JasterReports?

i le Nadav Kavalerchik -
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Hi Michael,

Thank you for your thoughts!

I would LOVE to dig up a PHP framework that could deliver nice graphs and easy SQL query customization that will integrate with Moodle. instead of all those Java based BI tools. but I have not encountered one yet fa'anoanoa

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In reply to Nadav Kavalerchik

Re: Does anyone have experience with BI tools like: Pentaho or JasterReports?

i le Michael Penney -

RL has released their ELIS Reports system: 

https://github.com/remotelearner/elis.reporting/tree/elis2

It make not be exactly what you are looking for (most reports work with ELIS data, though a number extract some data points from Moodle logs, etc.).

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In reply to Michael Penney

Re: Does anyone have experience with BI tools like: Pentaho or JasterReports?

i le Nadav Kavalerchik -
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Thanks! (dowloading....) I will see if i can extract the reports out of ELIS ata

(They always have some interesting develpment going on there!)

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In reply to Gavin Henrick

Re: Does anyone have experience with BI tools like: Pentaho or JasterReports?

i le Nadav Kavalerchik -
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Hi Gavin,

Thank you for sharing your thoughts!

We use CR (block/configurable_reports) for quick and predefined SQL queries which we make available to teachers within their courses. BUT, when we wish to run cross clients (Academic Institutes) heavy reports we take them off the production servers. still, with no real BI tool. just SQL queries.

Indeed, permissions one of our are major concerns. CR has some support for that but for higher level of data restriction to specific stuff (Academic personal) we need a BI tool. (I suppose)

I am following "Integrate Report Builder into core" tracker issue, to see which road Moodle HQ is about to follow regarding Custom Reports for Teachers and System admins. but it looks like there is no avoiding using some external BI tool for meta reports which includes other systems (SIS, CMS...) and usage report over other clients (Academic Institutes) we serve.

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In reply to Nadav Kavalerchik

Re: Does anyone have experience with BI tools like: Pentaho or JasterReports?

i le Nadav Kavalerchik -
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Recently, I got a recommendation to checkout ART, which turned out to be very easy to use. and quite powerful too. I use it to make ready made SQL reports and graphs that include information from other systems we use (SIS and CMS ...) 

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