Drop-in replacement plugin for the 'BI' component

[Pierre Smits <pi...@apache.org>]

Dear OFBiz user,

It pleases me to be able to announce that as of today the first release of
the drop-in replacement plugin for the 'BI' component in the ofbiz-plugins
repository has become available via Github (see [1]). I have called this
drop-in replacement the '*odwh*' plugin.

About 2 years ago I recognised that the 'BI' plugin in the OFBIZ-plugins
repository has a huge potential for OFBiz users in that it could populate a
data warehouse on a regular basis with the latest data from the OFBiz
transaction database, and thus enabling key users to gain a better insight
in their business domains of the organisation (using OFBiz) without a
complex and arduous process to get the data from the OFBiz transactions
database into the data warehouse.

However, while working to get the improvements into the code base (see [2]
and [3]), and documenting it (see [4]) I noticed that, based on
comments/reactions provided by (some of) the privileged contributors in the
OFBiz community, it would be a long stretch before this would become
available in the codebase.
And that, I found, would be a pity.
Not only regarding the effort already spent on improving the original
component, or regarding creating another opportunity to collaborate on
improving OFBiz not coming to fruition.
But more importantly: because you would not get it anywhere soon to
leverage your investment in using OFBiz.

Thus I decided to make this effort directly available to you as a drop-in
and replacement  plugin for the BI component in the ofbiz-plugins
repository.

*Not a BI solution*
Though the *odwh* plugin has a rudimentary report builder to show that
there is data in the data warehouse (through the population of dimension
and fact tables), the *odwh* plugin is not intended to be a BI solution.
There are already enough (open-source) solutions out there that will cater
to any kind of preference a BI oriented user (data analyst, etc.) may have.
A good open-source solution you may want to consider if you're considering
making BI reports available to your C*X level of your organisation is
Apache Superset.

*What is in the package*
The package contains following dimension entities (tables in your database):


   - date and time dimensions
   - Account dimension
   - Carrier dimension
   - Country and Currency dimensions
   - Customer dimension (some could/would call this the 'vendor' dimension)
   - Employee dimension
   - Facility Dimension (some could/would call this the 'warehouse'
   dimension)
   - PosTerminal dimension
   - Organisation dimension (regarding internal organisations)
   - Product dimension
   - Project and ProjectTask dimensions
   - Store dimension
   - SalesChannel and SalesPromo dimensions
   - Supplier dimension (some could/would call this the 'vendor' dimension

The package also contains following fact entities (tables in your database):


   - InventoryItemFact
   - PurchaseInvoiceItemFact
   - PurchaseOrderItemFact
   - SalesInvoiceItemFact
   - SalesOrderItemFact

And following (rudimentary) star schema entities (view-entities) to work
with the integrated report builder:


   - InventoryItemFact
   - PurchaseInvoiceItemStarSchema
   - PurchaseOrderItemStarSchema
   - SalesInvoiceItemStarSchema
   - SalesOrderItemStarSchema

Plus all the services (and configurations) required to:


   1. initialise the data warehouse
   2. update (manually) the data warehouse (for testing purposes)
   3. On a regular/scheduled basis (through configuration setting(s))
   populate the data warehouse with the latest changes from the OFBiz
   transactions database.

By default the DWH population is executed through a scheduled job (to be
executed at 2 AM every day: see the dataset - SystemProperty with
systemPropertyValue="HOUR_02" ) leveraging off-business and off-maintenance
hours. This job will be visible in the Jobs overview in the admin
application.

I hope you will give this *odwh* plugin a try-out (fork it, or download the
latest release), and if you have any questions do not hesitate to contact
me.
Implementation instructions is available at [5].
If you experience any issues with the plugin, please register them at [6]

   1. https://github.com/ORRTIZ/odwh/releases/tag/g-1.0.0
   2.
   https://issues.apache.org/jira/issues/?jql=project%20%3D%20OFBIZ%20AND%20component%20%3D%20bi%20%20AND%20resolution%20%3D%20Unresolved%20ORDER%20BY%20updatedDate%20DESC
   3. [3] https://github.com/apache/ofbiz-plugins/pull/11
   4. [4]
   https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OFBIZ/Business+Intelligence
   5. https://github.com/ORRTIZ/odwh/wiki/How-to-implement
   6. https://github.com/ORRTIZ/odwh/issues


PS The *odwh* plugin is intended for releases of OFBiz utilising the Gradle
build system. Are you working with a release utilising the Ant build system
and you would want to have something similar, please let me know.

Met vriendelijke groet,
Pierre Smits

*Proud* *contributor** of* Apache OFBiz <https://ofbiz.apache.org/> since
2008 (without privileges)

ORRTIZ.COM <http://www.orrtiz.com>
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