Orlando, Florida-based Pentaho said its AJAX-based integration with the Google Maps API is now listed on the Google Code open source website code.google.com.
The net result of the mashup is a map-based data visualization tool driven by Pentaho’s BI tools and Google Maps. Pentaho’s role is to deliver metrics that can be mapped across location schemas and presented as visual displays on Pentaho’s dashboards.
For example, the visualizations can help companies to pinpoint geographical regions linked to specific customer behavior or spending pattern, guide site selection for business expansion programs, and better hone campaigns on business opportunities.
Despite increased interest by commercial BI software vendors to tie their tools and applications to Google’s search appliance, Pentaho said it is the only vendor to integrate deeply with Google Maps.
Gretchen Moran, self-styled Open Sorceress at Pentaho, said the Google Maps mashup demonstrates the ability of the open source development model to deliver quick innovation.
Powerful, open technologies like Google Maps, Pentaho, and AJAX are like a giant toy-box for developers in the open source community…and hope that developers will check it out and create their own exciting new extensions and interfaces.
Google Code is aimed at developers interested in Google-related development and publishes free source code and lists of API services. The Google Maps API lets you embed Google Maps in your own web pages with JavaScript. You can add overlays to the map (including markers and polylines) and display shadowed info windows just like regular Google Maps.
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Other open source projects listed on Google Code are Perftools (performance analysis), sparsehashtable (hash map optimization) and coredumper (readable coredump complier) that are available under the new BSD 2.0 license. But future projects are as likely to be released under the Apache, MIT or GPL licenses.
