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Pentaho

Pentaho

Overview

What is Pentaho?

Pentaho is a suite of open source business intelligence and analytics products, now offered and supported by Hitachi Data Systems since the June 2015 acquisition.

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Learn from top reviewers

Trust Pentaho to deliver a smooth data mining experience

Rating: 9 out of 10
June 24, 2022
IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User
We use Pentaho to store, collaborate & present data in a more modular form, which in turn helps us in making better business decisions & also allows end-users to navig...
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Verified user
Analyst
Pentaho6 years of experience

Best for Reporting and Dashboard

Rating: 10 out of 10
April 12, 2022
Vetted ReviewVerified User
I use Pentaho for reporting and dashboard development. We develop the reports and integrate them with different database sources. It really helps us to achieve our business go...
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Verified user
Analyst
Pentaho1 year of experience

Data integration made easy

Rating: 8 out of 10
February 4, 2022
IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User
Pentaho is used in my organization, mainly by the IT team, creating processes and routines focused on data ingestion from many sources. We also use Pentaho to create complex E...
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Rafael Grandizoli
Manager - Product Management
Gerente de Operações
MUV
Pentaho2 years of experience

Integrate and connect all data sources with Ai engineering in the cloud environment

Rating: 9 out of 10
March 23, 2021
Vetted ReviewVerified User
Information is our company fuel, The information and this software are used in all parts of our company, marketing, and sales, as well as development and research we make bett...
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Ali Kazempour
Consultant - Information Technology
Information Technology Adviser
Information Technology Adviser
Pentaho2 years of experience

My Experience with Pentaho data integrator

Rating: 9 out of 10
March 2, 2020
IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User
I use the Pentaho Data Integration ETL tool in our enterprise business intelligence projects. I often use the Pentaho tool for data manipulation and data transport. Pentaho pl...
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zahit bogus
Consultant - Information Technology
Business Intelligence Consultant
EMO A.Ş
Pentaho2 years of experience
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Pricing

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Pentaho

Pentaho

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What is Pentaho?

Pentaho is a suite of open source business intelligence and analytics products, now offered and supported by Hitachi Data Systems since the June 2015 acquisition.

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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Product Demos

Pentaho and Hadoop Demo

YouTube

Adempiere Pentaho Demo - Products & Sales figures

YouTube

Agile BI with Pentaho BI Suite Demo

YouTube

Google Analytics (part 1/2) - Pentaho Data Integration Demo

YouTube

PENTAHO DATA INTEGRATION TOOL DEMO

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Control de Mando (Dashboard) con Pentaho de Matrix CPM Solutions

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View more demos
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Features

BI Standard Reporting

Standard reporting means pre-built or canned reports available to users without having to create them.

9
Avg 8.1

Ad-hoc Reporting

Ad-Hoc Reports are reports built by the user to meet highly specific requirements.

8.7
Avg 8.0

Report Output and Scheduling

Ability to schedule and manager report output.

9.7
Avg 8.3

Data Discovery and Visualization

Data Discovery and Visualization is the analysis of multiple data sources in a search for patterns and outliers and the ability to represent the data visually.

8.1
Avg 8.0

Access Control and Security

Access control means being able to determine who has access to which data.

9.1
Avg 8.5

Mobile Capabilities

Support for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.

8.3
Avg 7.9

Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding

APIs are a set of routines, protocols, and tools for used for embedding one application in another

8.6
Avg 7.8
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Product Details

What is Pentaho?

Pentaho Integrations

Pentaho Technical Details

Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

Pentaho is a suite of open source business intelligence and analytics products, now offered and supported by Hitachi Data Systems since the June 2015 acquisition.

Reviewers rate Customizable dashboards and Report Delivery Scheduling and Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete) highest, with a score of 9.9.

The most common users of Pentaho are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews From Top Reviewers

View all reviews
(1-5 of 14)

Pentaho: a strong open source BI suite

Rating: 9 out of 10
November 04, 2014
NS
Nathan Smith
Systems Analyst
Olathe Medical Center (Government Administration, 1001-5000 employees)
Vetted Review
Verified User
Pentaho
7 years of experience
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
Pentaho Data Integration was used for a variety of data integration projects, including populating a dimensional data warehouse. Data sources included relational data bases, flat files, and LDAP directories. Pentaho Reporting served reports from a range of data sources to multiple departments with security integrated with Active Directory. The Mondrian OLAP engine delivered pivot tables for slice and dice analysis.
Pros
  • The Pentaho Data Integration tool is extremely versatile. I find it easier to use than comparable tools like SSIS.
  • The reporting engine delivers reports in multiple formats, including Excel and PDF.
  • It is easy for users to subscribe to reports for delivery by email.
  • The report parameterization is very flexible, and I find it easier to use and more versatile than parameterization in Crystal.
Cons
  • If using the community edition, be prepared to invest some effort in learning the product. Documentation can be vague.
  • The new pivot table viewer is part of the enterprise edition. Fortunately there is a nice open source plug in called Saiku that can replace the old, difficult to use jPivot pivot table interface.
  • I wish there were easier ways to audit user activity, especially to see which items have not been accessed for a long time and could be retired.
  • There are not as many people who know how to use Pentaho in the market as there are people proficient in other BI tools. There is a learning curve and design patterns are not necessarily the same from one BI tool to the next.
Likelihood to Recommend
Pentaho provides a rich end to end BI solution. It is highly configurable. The data integration module is an especially useful and powerful. You may need a higher level of IT skills and support to work with Pentaho than you do with other BI tools. It is helpful to have SQL querying skills when creating Penthao reports. Make sure you have resources who are familiar with Pentaho or are able to get training.

Pentaho: A great DW/BI soultion

Rating: 9 out of 10
Incentivized
November 03, 2016
NK
Nikhil Karkare
Business Intelligence Analyst/Developer
CD-adapco (Computer Software, 201-500 employees)
Vetted Review
Verified User
Pentaho
2 years of experience
View profile
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
Pentaho is the primary source for the Business Intelligence in my company. We have many Pentaho users across the whole organization that are making a good use of Pentaho Analyzer to create the reports. At the report side, it helps the business users to evaluate all the work that has been done by the different teams across the organizations. By seeing the reports they can check, for example, how many issues are open, how many bugs have been fixed in a specific duration, how many builds failed in which phase etc.
Pros
  • First thing what I have experienced about Pentaho is that it is user friendly. The best thing about Pentaho is Pentaho Data Integration. I have never used more user friendlier ETL tool like PDI. All the jobs and transformation steps are easy to understand. And I like the sample transformations and jobs that are provided with the package. It is so user friendly that, even if you don't know SQL, it will generate it for you. If you don't want to write scripts, that's fine, you can do it in PDI.
  • I have found that Pentaho can be integrated with any technology or framework. I have easily and successfully integrated it with HDFS, EMR, S3, CouchDB, many different RDBMSs. I would consider it as a strength of Pentaho. Also if you are stuck or you find any error, the type of logging will have an answer for you. I found the logging mechanism very effective.
  • I have mostly used Pentaho Analyzer and Schema Workbench at the BI side. It is user friendly too and we have a very few users who come to the developers to help them understanding the UI of PUC.
Cons
  • Most of the companies use star schema in their Data Warehouses but they are not the pure star schemas. There are the bridge tables, group tables but when using Schema Workbench to design a cube, it gets very painful for the developers to accommodate such schema in it. To do this, I have to go to the XML file and add the new elements. I would love to see the feature where Schema Workbench can accommodate the bridge tables as they are the part of star schema too.
  • When it comes to ETL, I have found PDI to be the best tool, but at the report side, it is not as good as the other tools available in the market. Especially the users always complain about the graphs in the Pentaho Analyzer. I think. the UI needs a lot of improvement.
  • PDI is slow reading the JSON files. There is a fast JSON input step available in the marketplace but I think I would be great if Pentaho can make the JSON reading even faster.
  • When I export the repository, I see the files names are encoded with UTF-8 encoding. It would be great, if the spaces and the special characters can be preserved while exporting a BA repository.
Likelihood to Recommend
Well suited scenarios: When we need to deal with any type of RDBMS, from data input to the data loading, Pentaho is super fast. It has many bulk loaders available too. Dealing with the tables is the specialty of Pentaho.

Less Appropriate scenarios: When you have a star schemas with the bridge tables or snow-flake schemas, you will need a lot of additional work to be done in Pentaho apparently. Also, dealing with the files is not bad, but it should be improved.
** My review is for Pentaho 5.4.0.8 or previous releases.

Pentaho for Quality Assurance

Rating: 8 out of 10
Incentivized
February 24, 2016
Verified User
Team Lead in Information Technology
Computer Software Company, 501-1000 employees
Vetted Review
Verified User
Pentaho
2 years of experience
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
At our organization we are building a data ware house for data migration and analytics. After researching several options we went for the Pentaho community edition which is an open source tool. Pentaho played big role in the implementation of ETL jobs and QA testing. The features available in Pentaho covered all of our scenarios, plus it allowed us to plug in external jars to use for any unsupported activity.
Pros
  • Pentaho allows for migration from one system to another system without much trouble.
  • Minimum code or almost no code expertise is required. Just get your SQL and Pentaho will do rest.
  • It is difficult to verify millions of rows. But with Pentaho you can do that, this makes the QA task easier.
Cons
  • Pentaho does make comparison of data between two systems fairly easier compared to other systems, but it lags in terms of output you get. The output has a merge difference option which will show a difference transaction only but if you have large data set columns it is not easy to find issues.
  • Date formatting and number formatting is again an issue, both the systems should have the same datatype. It was difficult for us to compare as a new system had updated data types and pentaho failed to compare these.
Likelihood to Recommend

Pentaho is well suited for:

  • Migration of large data.
  • Reading XML file and processing data.
  • QA Testing.
  • Data modeling.
  • Data processing.
It is less appropriate for:
  • DataType validation
  • Reporting

Pentaho- An adequate BI solution for users on a budget!

Rating: 7 out of 10
Incentivized
February 26, 2016
IM
Ivan Miller
Business Intelligence Engineer
Experticity (Marketing and Advertising, 51-200 employees)
Vetted Review
Verified User
Pentaho
1 year of experience
View profile
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
Pentaho's BI stack is being used by our entire company. We use their tooling for ETL, delivering reports, and as a sort of end-point for a custom web app that we've built. The end point uses xaction and Mondrian to deliver data to our front end. We also make use of the community edition of the BI server--this houses several reports that our analyst team has built as well as resources necessary to support our custom app. In the near future we'll also be using the tool's big data plugins to ingest data into our data warehouse from hive/hadoop.
Pros
  • ETL, fairly wide support for a number of different data sources, a good API for writing plugins, and great out-of-the-box functionality.
  • Community support and great documentation for using their tooling.
  • Mondrian/OLAP, great engine for processing MDX queries.
Cons
  • pentaho's analyzer tool/front-end. This doesn't come close to competing with products like Tableau.
  • Pentaho Report Designer, this looks like something that was built in the early 90's and is extremely clunky to use for new-users
  • Schema Workbench, would be nice to see better support for snowflake type schemas
Likelihood to Recommend
Pentaho is very well suited for organizations looking for end-to-end BI solutions without wanting to break the bank--particularly because the community edition has most of the functionality necessary to get you started, and it's free. Honestly though, if you have deep pockets there are probably more complete solutions out there in terms of functionality

Data Integration with Pentaho Kettle review

Rating: 9 out of 10
December 05, 2014
IS
Itamar Steinberg
CEO
Inflow Systems LTD (Computer Software, 11-50 employees)
Vetted Review
Verified User
Pentaho
7 years of experience
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
I used Pentaho Kettle as a team manager of development and later as a CIO. After that I opened a company that consults and implement business intelligence solutions. We are using Pentaho mostly with the data integration module. I think that of all the modules of Pentaho, Kettle is the most complete. It can give a "fair fight" to source solutions that are not open. The problem it addresses of course is to extract data from various sources; transform them; ”play with data”; and then load it to the target. I find the transformation most valuable and rich with functionality. I even made a full scale course about it, you can find it on udemy.
Pros
  • Pentaho Kettle gives you a great graphic user interface to plan your transformation and jobs.
  • Pentaho Kettle makes it easy to handle errors, logging and performance.
  • Pentaho Kettle has dozen of great steps like: lookup and SCD functionality.
Cons
  • Several steps have performance issues like the Json input.
  • The community edition does not include scheduler and job manager so you need to figure it out yourself, unless of course you buy the Enterprise edition.
  • I think that web service should be easier to operate.
Likelihood to Recommend
Pros:
I find it suited for 90% of data integration projects , its a very good tool, easy to use, stable and affordable.
Cons:
I think that the big data connections are still not perfect, so if you have a NoSQL DBl / Hadoop / Cassandra, you might consider extracting the data to file from the source using MapReduce. Also, if you need bulk load, sometimes it's better to use it directly on a tool, for example Redshift / InfiniDB (that is no longer with us).
Apart than that I think it will suit you well.
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