On November 10, Pentaho Corp., provider of open source business intelligence (BI) software, announced that the Mondrian On-Line Analytical Processing (OLAP) project is joining forces with Pentaho to become a permanent feature of the Pentaho BI project, which provides comprehensive reporting, analysis, dashboards, workflow, and data mining capabilities.

Initially released in 2002, Mondrian OLAP Server supports the aggregation, calculation and categorization of data from standard relational databases, including Oracle, MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, IBM DB2, and others. Mondrian uses the t popular Java integrated development environment Eclipse as the graphical editor for defining and editing OLAP models. It also implements the industry standard OLAP query language, MDX, and works with both the XML for Analysis and JOLAP specifications.

Pentaho is committed to provide uninterrupted support to Mondrian's existing end-user and development communities, and to ensure it remains a free open source product. Integration between Mondrian and the rest of the Pentaho BI Platform has already been accomplished, with further enhancements to the OLAP Server on the way. Future releases of the product will be renamed Pentaho OLAP Server to make it easier for customers to find, download and obtain support.

Customers who were formerly forced into paying high prices to traditional BI vendors now have the opportunity to gain a robust analysis platform at a remarkably low cost by utilizing open source relational databases such as MySQL together with the Pentaho OLAP Server. When deployed in conjunction with other components of the Pentaho BI Platform, customers are able to benefit from a complete, end-to-end BI solution, from a single vendor, at a fraction of the cost of other alternatives.

"Our customers and partners are looking for a single source to provide for all their BI needs and today's announcement gives them additional confidence by having the key products under one roof and available under a simple, cost-saving licensing model," said Richard Daley, President of Pentaho Corporation. "We're also extremely excited about having Julian Hyde, the founder and lead developer of Mondrian, join our team and look forward to his continued success in the design, development and evangelizing of the Pentaho OLAP Server."

"By joining with Pentaho we have the opportunity to take the Mondrian OLAP Server to a much higher level -- backed by Pentaho's vision, experience, and professional support, services and development resources. The open source model utilized by Pentaho allows me to continue working on it and -- together with other Java development community members -- guide its direction to ensure it gains wide recognition as one of the best OLAP servers available at any price," said Julian Hyde, Founder and Lead Developer, Mondrian Project. Julian will continue to be the lead developer on the project in his new role as Chief Architect - OLAP Technologies at Pentaho.