Pentaho has updated its flagship Business Analytics platform by introducing data visualisation – just months after CEO Quentin Gallivan told CBR it was just "eye candy."
As well as data visualisation Pentaho Business Analytics 4.5 also introduces geo-mapping, heat grids, scatter or bubble charts, interactive reporting enhancements which the company says will make it easier for non-technical users to understand and in-memory cache performance improvements.
Speaking to CBR, Gallivan said the improvements in version 4.5 will mean users can visualise data from many data sources, which includes big data.
The big data capabilities include distribution across Hadoop clusters and expanded NoSQL database integration including read, write and reporting with Apache Cassandra, DataStax and MongoDB, the company said.
The interactive visual analytics features include lasso filtering, zoom and attribute highlighting on all chart types.
Many of these new features have been available in other products for a while now, and indeed elements such as data visualisation have been part of Pentaho’s portfolio before, but only via its developer community.
The introduction of them in 4.5 is a response to user demand, Gallivan told CBR. "It was always in the plan," he said, "and while customers have been using it through our developer community they wanted more out-of-the-box functionality."
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Gallivan also said that Pentaho takes a different approach to its in-memory capabilities than its competitors do. Frequently used data is stored in-memory for faster retrieval while everything else is sent to the disk level. This makes for a cheaper option as users do not need to invest in as much memory, Pentaho says.
