[OSGeo-Discuss] The open source geospatial BI components GeoMondrian and Spatialytics are available!

[Thierry Badard]

Hello,

After the release of a new version of its open source spatial ETL tool,
GeoKettle (http://www.geokettle.org) yesterday (please see the
announcement at
http://geosoa.scg.ulaval.ca/en/index.php?module=announce&ANN_user_op=view&ANN_id=12
for more details), the GeoSOA research group
(http://geosoa.scg.ulaval.ca) at Laval University, Quebec, Canada is
proud to announce the availibility as new open source projects of
GeoMondrian (http://www.geo-mondrian.org), the first implementation of a
Spatial OLAP (SOLAP) server and Spatialytics
(http://www.spatialytics.org), a lightweight cartographic component
which enables navigation in SOLAP data cubes. GeoKettle, GeoMondrian and
Spatialytics are components of the complete geospatial BI (Business
Intelligence) software stack developed by the GeoSOA research group.

GeoMondrian:

GeoMondrian (http://www.geo-mondrian.org) is a "spatially-enabled"
version of the open source Mondrian OLAP server (also named Pentaho
Analysis Services, http://mondrian.pentaho.org) developed by Pentaho
(http://www.pentaho.com). To make it clear, GeoMondrian is an
implementation of a Spatial OLAP (SOLAP) server. As far as we know, it
is the first implementation of such a server and it is open source!

It adds to Mondrian a Geometry data type, enabling storage of member
properties and measures containing vector geometries (points, lines,
polygons) natively within the data cubes. Some MDX extensions supporting
this data type are also provided. They allow to add spatial analysis
capabilities to the analytical queries.

GeoMondrian provides then a consistent integration of spatial objects
into the OLAP data cube structure, instead of fetching them from an
external spatial DBMS, web service or a GIS file. To summarize,
GeoMondrian brings to the Mondrian OLAP server what PostGIS brings to
the PostgreSQL DBMS, i.e. a consistent and powerful support for
geospatial data!

Spatialytics:

Spatialytics (http://www.spatialytics.org) is an open source lightweight
cartographic component which enables navigation in Spatial OLAP (SOLAP)
data cubes. It aims to be integrated into existing dashboard frameworks
in order to produce interactive geo-analytical dashboards. Such
dashboards support the decision making process by including the
geospatial dimension in the analysis of enterprise data.

Spatialytics is based on the OpenLayers web mapping client, and uses
olap4j for connection to OLAP data sources. For now, it requires
GeoMondrian, the first implementation of a Spatial OLAP (SOLAP) server,
to be able to display members of a geospatial dimension on a map.

Spatialytics allows then:

  * the connection with a Spatial OLAP server such as GeoMondrian
  * the navigation in the geospatial data cubes
  * and the cartographic representation of some measures and members of a
    geospatial dimension as static or dynamic choropleth maps (for now)


GeoKettle, GeoMondrian and Spatialytics have already been adopted by
some organisations, as for instance by the GeoBI project
(http://www.geobi.org). GeoETL is GeoKettle, GeOLAP is GeoMondrian and
GeoReport will soon benefit from Spatialytics capabilities (a student
funded by the Google Summer of Code 2009 program, under the umbrella of
OSGeo, is currently working on this task at Laval University).

I hope you will enjoy GeoKettle, GeoMondrian and Spatialytics. If you
require more information about these open source geospatial BI
software components, please visit the projects' pages and do not
hesitate to contact us through the mailing lists or directly
(http://geosoa.scg.ulaval.ca/en/index.php?module=pagemaster&PAGE_user_op=view_page&PAGE_id=2&MMN_position=2:2).

Best regards,

Th.

-- 
Prof. Thierry Badard, Ph.D.
____________________________________________________________

Professeur au Département des sciences géomatiques
(http://www.scg.ulaval.ca)
Chercheur régulier au Centre de Recherche en Géomatique
(http://www.crg.ulaval.ca)
Chercheur régulier du Réseau de Centres d'Excellence GEOIDE
(http://www.geoide.ulaval.ca)
Chercheur collaborateur de la chaire de recherche
industrielle en base de données géospatiales décisionnelles
(http://mdspatialdb.chair.scg.ulaval.ca)
Responsable du projet de formation sur les normes
internationales en géomatique
(http://standards.scg.ulaval.ca)
Administrateur des projets open source GeOxygene et GeoKettle
(http://oxygene-project.sourceforge.net &
  http://www.geokettle.org)
Membre votant de la fondation OSGeo
(http://www.osgeo.org)

Département des sciences géomatiques
Faculté de foresterie, de géographie et de géomatique
Pavillon Louis-Jacques Casault
1055, avenue du Séminaire
Local 1343
Université Laval
Québec (Québec) G1V 0A6
Canada

Tél.: +1.418.656-7116 - Fax: +1.418.656-7411
Courriel : Thierry.Badard at scg.ulaval.ca
Web: http://geosoa.scg.ulaval.ca
____________________________________________________________

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