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The Develop Your BA
Environment workflow outlines the processes that you use to set up and configure
your Pentaho Server for BA
development, and to build, change, and test Pentaho solutions until they meet your unique business requirements. This process
is similar to the Trial Download Evaluation experience, except that you
will be completely configuring the Pentaho Server and working with your own report designers and data scientists, as well as
Pentaho
professional services. The end result of
this section is to learn BA implementation best practices and deploy your BA solution to a
production server.
Before you begin developing your BA environment, we recommend that you attend
Pentaho
training classes to learn how to install
and configure the Pentaho Server,
as well as how to develop data models and applications.
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- Child Topics
Set up your Pentaho Server
This table helps you verify that the
hardware and software requirements are met, install the software, and configure the Pentaho Server and BA Design tools.
Table 1. Pentaho Server Set-Up ChecklistChecklist | Steps | Notes |
Verify System Requirements |
| In preparation for this task, make sure that you:- Acquire one or more servers that meet the requirements.
- Obtain the correct drivers for your system.
|
Obtain Software and Install the Pentaho Server |
| After you have the hardware, you will need to:- Get the software from your Sales Support representative.
- Install the software - we recommend using the installation wizard.
- Access the User Console, toured the Administration page, and changed the default
administrator password.
|
Change the Pentaho Server Fully
Qualified URL |
| If you are going to have many machines pointing to one server, make sure you
change the fully qualified URL:- Change the URL and verify that you can connect to it.
|
Configure the Pentaho Server |
| After installing the software and logging on to the User Console for the first time, you
will need to:- Add all relevant Pentaho
licenses.
- Set up your data connections.
- Configure an email server through the Administration
page.
- Learn how to manage schedules through the Schedules page.
These will be set up during the production phase.
|
Configure BA Design Tools |
| If you plan to use BA design Tools, make sure you do these tasks. Otherwise,
skip this step:- Configure your BA design tools.
- Specify the data connections required for each tool.
We recommend that you NOT configure these tools on your production server.
Rather, configure them on your development server, test them, then migrate them over
to production. |
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Import data sources and data models
Follow the steps in the Data Sources and
Data Models Checklist to create data sources and models that are ideal for agile development
of your BA solution.
Table 2. Data Sources and Data Models ChecklistTask | Steps | Notes |
Choose Data Source Types |
|
- Review the information about data sources.
- Examine the differences between the different data models - relational data
models vs. multidimensional data models.
|
Create Data Sources and Models |
|
- Learn how the Pentaho Server
and Data Source Wizard
work together to create usable data sources and data models.
|
Create Database Table Data Sources |
|
- Create Data Sources and preliminary data models using the Data Source Wizard.
|
Learn about Mondrian Schemas |
|
- Create Mondrian schemas and add a Mondrian data source
- Adapt the schema to work with Analyzer
- Modify the schema in Schema Workbench
|
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Create reports and further refine data models
We recommend that you work
with data scientists and business analysts at this stage of the process to achieve the best
results. As you get ready to move to production, use data sources created using either
Pentaho Schema Workbench or
Pentaho Metadata Editor.
Table 3. Create Reports and Refine
Data Models ChecklistTask | Steps | Notes |
Create Analysis Reports, Interactive Reports,
and Dashboards |
|
- Create Interactive and Analysis reports, as well as a
Dashboard.
- Verify that the reports show the data that you want.
- If they do not, work with data scientists to get the results you
need.
|
Create a Report with Report Designer |
|
- (Optional) Create a report in Report Designer.
|
Refine Your Data Source Model |
|
- Refine data models to get the data that you want to see in your
reports.
- Create the reports again to verify the results.
- Repeat this process as needed.
|
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Test environment quality
If you have decided to
perform quality assurance testing,
upload your content to the Pentaho Repository, then download it to the QA
server. Some organizations have an additional layer of User Acceptance Testing that is
performed after QA testing is complete.
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