Kettle (Pentaho Data Integration) is a very popular open source ETL tool. Built on Java platform, it can run in multiple OS such as Windows, Linux, Mac, and other Unix based platform.

Regular expression is a powerful construct to manipulate any text and is supported in Java language. With the capability of Regex evaluation step and Java scripting in Kettle, I give a simple example on how to read an “unstructured” log file and make it tabular using the steps.

Get the sample transformation file from this wiki page.

Article source: http://business-intelligence.phi-integration.com/2008/07/kettle-regex-sample.html

Introduction

MDX (Multidimensional Expression) is a language construct to query OLAP cubes. It is much like SQL is a language construct to query relational database.

MDX was an initiative of Microsoft as part of the OLE DB for OLAP (ODBO) specification in 1997. Mosha Pasumansky is one of the architects of the language. MDX was soon implemented by many OLAP vendors as their standard OLAP query language including Mondrian.

Example of simple MDX query is shown below :

select {[Measures].[Unit Sales]} ON COLUMNS,
{[Product].[All Products]} ON ROWS
from [Sales]
where [Time].[1997]

This will query from “Sales” cube a “Unit Sales” measure value from “All Products” dimension that happened in 1997. You can try it against Foodmart sample database.

MDX entry in Mondrian JPivot’s Sample

You can type your MDX query in JPivot JSP page in two ways :

• Type it under jp:mondrianQuery tag
• Type it under MDX editor

Using MDX Editor

• Start your Mondrian OLAP server
• Browse to one of your sample JSP file, for example “JPivot pivot table”
• Click on MDX button in the above page toolbar, it will show up an MDX Editor
• Type the previous sample MDX query here, and click Apply button
  
  
  
• You will now have a new slice and dice table view of that MDX query

More Resources

Check on the following web resources for more information about MDX :

• Mondrian’s MDX Documentation
• Mosha Pasumansky
• Microsoft MDX Reference
• MDX Calculation Sample
• Nicholas Goodmans’s Blog

Article source: http://business-intelligence.phi-integration.com/2008/08/mdx-in-mondrian.html

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal shows the perils, real or imagined, of product flaws in this emerging age of social media. Proctor Gamble is a highly admired company especially for its careful stewardship of its many premier brands. Can it be that any American mother, in a word association game, would not tell you that Pampers equates to diapers?

Imagine the horror of the brand managers for Pampers when Roshana Shah opened a Facebook site to campaign against PG’s recent market launch of Dry Max diapers. As the WSJ article states, this is not the only site to open up in complaint of the new design. In reading some of the recent posts, there are a lot of very unhappy moms out there. PG is fighting back in what may be a risky approach with some discrediting of the posters and leaders of this movement. Will it work? Time will tell.

But PG is pursuing some very positive approaches as well. They are not unaware of the power of social media. Before the product launch, PG developed a network of Mommy bloggers to sample and test their new design. Seems like a pretty savvy move to me. They also have their own Facebook page for Pampers that states its mission as “Caring for Babies’ Happy, Healthy Development.” The site is filled with tributes and stories of Motherhood. PG also allows posters to complain and many complaints as well as supportive posts are to be found on the site. It is really amazing. It is also a rich source of data. But how to sort through it all and make sense of it?

Continue reading “Don’t mess with Mom, especially if she is on Facebook”

Article source: http://www.biblogs.com/2010/05/25/don%E2%80%99t-mess-with-mom-especially-if-she-is-on-facebook/