Creating Mondrian Schemas with Power*Architect

Since I don't have time to write much software myself these days, I figured I'd share this gem with you all. SQL Power, the Canadian Business Intelligence Authority (that's their tag line these days...), sponsors many open source projects. One of them is called Power*Architect; a marvellous cross-platform data modelling tool.

As far as I know, there are close to none "enterprise ready" data modelling tools that work on Linux and Mac. I also suspect none are free, whatever the platform. Visio is certainly not one of them.

Why is it so wonderful? Well, to start with, it can retro/forward engineer most JDBC compatible databases. That's a big plus. And it gets better. You can also use it to create a Mondrian schema. Yep. The team at SQL Power published a tutorial for that last week.

I do have to disclose that I will be working on their projects starting in October. I'm not trying to sell it to you; it's free anyways.  One thing is for sure though. I can't wait to get my hands in there. So I encourage everyone to grab a copy here and fill as many bug reports as you can. It's not 1.0 yet, so community contributions are a must. Having worked with the team for three weeks back in July, I can guarantee that each and every reported bug and suggested feature is closely studied by the development team.

olap4j - A comprehensive tutorial

I've been very busy lately with the new job comming up and many other changes in my personal life, but fear not; I'm cooking something up for you people. I'm working on a comprehensive guide to olap4j. Many people have expressed a need for a more step-by-step introduction on olap4j, what it is, and how to unleash it's raw power. In the next few weeks, I should be able to finally put some more time on it and release a first final draft. Until then, take care!

UPDATE: I finally finished the tutorial. See http://devdonkey.blogspot.com/2010/09/olap4j-tutorial.html