[SoC] SoC report: Geo-BI dashboards

[Etienne Dube]

Hi everybody,

I didn't do as much as I planned on the GSoC project for this week, 
since I worked quite a bit on finishing my masters thesis. Not done with 
this yet, but I will allocate to the GSoC project a greater part of my 
time next week, to get started with the coding.

1. What did I do this week: I've installed and played with some of the 
potentially useful frameworks and software which could play a part in 
the development of the Geo-BI dashboard component. Configured the server 
part of MapFish and learned a bit of Python at the same time. I also 
experimented with the Pentaho Dashboard framework and Halogen, a 
proof-of-concept web OLAP client based on the Google Web Toolkit (GWT). 
So far I decided to concentrate my efforts towards the development of a 
light Spatial OLAP web mapping client based on OpenLayers and the 
Mondrian/olap4j API. Further integration with an existing BI dashboard 
framework will be addressed later on.

2. What do I plan doing next week: try generating a map on OpenLayers 
(and possibly MapFish) using member data pulled from a Mondrian cube (w/ 
a connection to a PostgreSQL+PostGIS DB and querying data from a 
geometry field in a dimension table... already did this once so it 
should go smoothly,)

3. Am I blocked on anything: I realized that integration with the 
existing Pentaho Dashboard framework will possibly be more complicated 
than I thought, but this will not be blocking any progress. Since this 
is a brand new project, I expected some bumps along the road ;) .

Have a nice weekend,

Etienne