Open source BI tools provide a great value to the Linux
users for managing their business. Business intelligence tools are
popularly known as BI tools. It doesn’t matter whether it is a
brick and mortar business organization or online business; they
have to work with a lot of data for business intelligence. Business
intelligence consists of some strategies for the data analysis of
any business. Though it is not possible to process these huge piles
of accumulated data manually. The open source software developers
have created some computer programs for business
intelligence.
Business intelligence tools are not always a standalone
program. Instead, they are a group of tools that can retrieve and
analyze business data and make reports according to that. With the
spreading of cloud computing[1], the BI tools nowadays
don’t always need resource-heavy individual installations. Instead,
most of the BI tools are available for all the major operating
systems. No matter whether you are running Linux, Mac or Windows,
open-source business intelligence software will get you
covered.
Open source BI tools are free to use and can be modified
so that these meet the requirements of any individual organization.
Besides, these open source business intelligence software provide a
more secure environment for sensitive data. Business Intelligence
tools can be of different types. For instance, digital dashboards,
spreadsheets, reporting, and querying tools, activity monitoring,
data warehouse are all some kind of business intelligence
tools.
It’s your job to find out the kind of tool that you will
need for managing your business. To make that easier, we have
included 20 best open source BI tools and software that will help
you play with data.
1. Pentaho
Pentaho[2]
is probably the most popular open source BI tool available for
enterprises. It can analyze data, create reports, build workflows,
and mines data from different sources. This suite has a community
edition that is completely free to use. This is very helpful for
small online businesses and college students who are struggling
with their start-ups. You can either go for the full package or
opt-in for individual modules. The tools are accessible from any
browser using their web platform.
Key Features of Pentaho
- Has an advanced report creation tool for data
reporting. - The integrated design studio helps the managers to mark
up reports for easier understanding. - You can add a layer of custom metadata to your existing
data sources so that you can find them easily. - Pentaho Data Integration solution has included Kettle
that can help to extract and load data to access data
warehouse. - The advanced graphical tool can create ROLAP schemas for
data analysis.
2. JasperReports
JasperReports is a widely used reporting engine for
business intelligence. It can automatically create print-friendly
easy to read reports from the extracted data. It is a part of the
Jasper Business Intelligence Suite. The other tools of this suite
can easily be integrated with JasperReports for more productivity.
You can even embed this tool into any Java-based software of your
organization for getting print or web reports. The JasperServer
will let you import these reports for further
interactions.
Key Features of JasperReports
- The reports support a wide variety of output formats
including PDF, HTML, XLS, CSV, etc. - The JFreeChart library helps you integrate different
visual elements like a chart, graph, bar, etc. for making it easy
to understand. - JasperReports supports comprehensive tools for custom
variables and analysis. - There is no virtual limitation for the length and size of
the limit. This is why you can make reports with a longer time
frame. - The additional tool, iReport is a graphical report
designer that will customize the report for your business
organization. - This tool supports Unicode which is a great feature if
you want to work with a variety of local languages.
3. RapidMiner
RapidMiner is a well-known data mining tool[5]
that uses machine learning for the analysis of the database. This
tool was formerly known as YALE. There are both a command-line
version and a visual editor available for this tool. This tool is
highly effective for mining data from high throughput scientific
apparatus.
The visual interface of this tool is very easy to use. It
has also a plugin or extension feature for integrating new
variables without knowing much technical stuff. This feature helps
to make custom algorithms for mining data that meets the
requirement of your business organization.
Key Features of RapidMiner
- It supports Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) for the
discovery of data that helps to forecast different situations based
on many what-if scenarios. - It uses the Java environment and XML for data description
that helps to use this tool on any platform. - It has full integration with the Waikato Environment for
Knowledge Analysis (WEKA) that helps to mine data with the help of
open-source machine learning. - It has built-in more than five hundred modules for
different tasks including validation, visualization, preprocessing,
forecasting, etc. - This tool provides Java API for integrating RapidMiner
with your business intelligence software.
4. Talend Open Studio
Talend Open Studio is an open source BI tool for the
extraction, loading, and transformation of data. It is a Java-based
tool and runs on the Eclipse RCF development environment. The
graphical user interface of this tool is very easy to use which
consists of a graphical designer and a metadata repository for
files. Talend Open Studio supports scalability which helps to gain
more productivity from the analysis of data for your business. The
users can write scripts to make components for extending the
functionality of this BI software.
Key Features of Talend Open Studio
- It features an advanced business modeler with a very
user-friendly job designer for your growing business. - The metadata manager helps to create and manage metadata
to integrate your business data piles with other tools for the
analysis and reporting. - Talend Open Studio Has a built-in library of over 400
components for extending the features. - Almost every feature has got built-in impact analysis
tool to measure the risks involving with the new model. - Drag and drop metadata and component searching feature is
a very useful feature for the business personals.
5. ReportServer
This is an open source BI tool that is very versatile and
straight to the point. The community edition of this tool is more
generalized and free to use. But if you want more customizations
and flexibility then you can opt for the enterprise edition which
will cost you some bucks. This software can easily integrate with
the Jasper BI Suite along with some other popular business
intelligence software.
Key Features of ReportServer
- The user interface is very smooth and fluent. It gives a
flexible environment even for the beginners. - It is a web-based software suite and for this reason, you can
run it inside your browser from anywhere. - It features an advanced ad hoc reporting tool that can prepare
real-time reports based on the user’s needs. - ReportServer has built-in support for exporting reports in
Excel file format. - The scheduler is a very useful feature that can create and
publish reports in the predefined schedule. - Being a web-based BI tool, it supports collaborative works
through the integrated TeamSpaces feature.
6. Metabase
Metabase is an open source data analytics tool. This tool helps
the business personals to get answers from different queries based
on their company’s user data. It can even visualize the data and
reports in an attractive way that will make the presentations
easier. Metabase works with a wide range of database solutions
including Google Analytics, Google BigQuery, Amazon Athena, Yandex
ClickHouse, Oracle, etc. Metabase has one of the simplest
installation systems. You can deploy Metabase in your preferred
cloud with just one click. You can even install it into your
personal computer for personal reporting.
Key Features of Metabase
- It supports Docker image for running into any service of your
choice. - One-click installation feature supports popular services like
AWS Elastic Beanstalk and Heroku. - It can run locally on any operating system including Linux
through the Java environment. - Unlike most other BI tools, the user interface is very clean
with modern gestures. - It supports integration with Slack for collaborative team
works. - You can even rename, annotate and edit different properties of
data for the ease of use of your human workers.
7. Knowage
You may have heard the name of SpagoBI, a very popular open
source business intelligence tool. Knowage is the successor of that
tool that inherits every good property of Spago. It provides a wide
range of data analysis that is supported by many popular analytical
engines. Like any other business intelligence tools, it provides
all the common features.
But what’s interesting is that it also provides some new
features useful for emerging businesses like location intelligence,
collaboration, visual inquiries, etc. It has also a paid commercial
edition that provides additional administrative features and direct
support from the developers.
Key Features of Knowage
- It has got an advanced analytical model that can perform many
common analytical algorithms and creates reports according to
that. - The newer versions have got a graphic design tool that allows
interactive analysis and visualizations. - Even the free and open-source community version has got a wide
number of administrative tools including scheduler, menu
management, engine configuration, audit monitoring, etc. - Notification service, e-mail client, search engine,
collaborative tools, etc. are built-in with the software suite to
boost up your company’s productivity. - The real-time console and gauge dials help the administrators
to monitor the subtle changes and takes actions according to
that.
8. KNIME
KNIME stands for Konstanz Information Miner. It is a German
business intelligence tool that provides a visual environment for
data analysis. This tool can integrate, explore and analyze data
for further processing and reporting. KNIME is based on Java and
works with the Eclipse Interactive Development Environment.
The modular API support enables this tool to extend the
functionalities. It uses machine learning for data mining by using
the popular process named data pipelining. It can create data flows
and analyze them visually with the interactive visualizer.
Key Features of KNIME
- This tool supports scalability based on the machine’s
capability for getting the maximum possible output from parallel
computing. - It has well-defined API supports that can be used to develop
plugins for feature extensions. - The user interface is very easy to use and intuitive that helps
even the persons with no technical background maintaining this
tool. - The command-line version of this tool helps the veteran
executives use this software for batch executions remotely. - KNIME supports pre-processing and data cleansing with joining,
normalization, binning, sampling, etc.
9. BIRT Project
BIRT is an open-source technology platform for data analysis and
reporting. It is widely used as a business intelligence software
among different organizations. It is a set of Java-based web
applications that runs on Java to Enterprise Edition. This tool
supports a wide range of modules and styles for reporting. The
public API of this tool lets you use the functionalities within
your other business intelligence applications.
Key Features of the BIRT
Project
- It features a report designer that helps you to customize your
reports using the visual environment. - The advanced charting engine generates charts from the derived
data that can be exported to other applications for
publishing. - BIRT Project supports different reporting styles including
charts, lists, crosstabs, compound reports, etc. - It supports data manipulation through sorting, filtering,
grouping and summarizing. - It supports different file formats and sources for data mining.
You can even code on your own to add support for more data
sources.
10. Helical Insight
Helical Insight is a Java-based open source BI tool. It has both
community and enterprise edition for different types of users. The
community edition is free with limited capabilities. But for most
users, the community edition will be sufficient. You can run this
tool in any operating system with the Eclipse IDE preinstalled. You
will miss some features like custom dashboard designer, ad hoc
reporting and real-time reporting in the community edition. But if
you need these features then you can go for their closed source BI
framework with developer support.
Key Features of Helical
Insight
- It has user role management and email scheduling feature
built-in with this software. - You can get technical support from their large community forum
if you ever face any problem. - It features an XML driven workflow management for your business
organization. - You will get free community updates regularly for the bug fixes
and security patches. - For report creation and data analysis, it supports the backend
EFW method for convenience.
11. SQL Power Wabit
SQL Power Wabit is known as the all-in-one business intelligence
tool. The easy to use software suite has made the SQL Power Wabit
stand out from other open source BI software. The main goal of the
developers was to make a straight forward environment for the
business personals where they can perform all their business
analytics and reporting without much technical knowledge. The
community edition of this tool is completely free to use. It has a
drag-and-drop report creation tool with advanced features where no
coding skill is required.
Key Features of SQL Power
Wabit
- Standard reporting feature with custom dashboard editor for
creating ad hoc reports for your organization. - It supports different visual elements like line, bar and pie
chart for making visually attractive reports. - It has real-time business intelligence reporting with live
result-set updates which is not much common among other open-source
BI software. - Users don’t require any SQL or Javascript knowledge to run and
maintain this tool for their business.
13. ART – A Reporting
Tool
ART – A Reporting Tool is a simple yet powerful open-source tool
for business intelligence. It is very lightweight with some
straightforward features. It is a browser-based tool and it can run
on any platform including Linux. This tool can quickly deploy SQL
query results and publish when the result is ready. This Java-based
tool needs Apache Tomcat installed on the computer to run. It has
great documentation on the internet to get you through the easy
deployment process for any operating system.
Key Features of ART – A Reporting
Tool
- It can generate a business analytics report via the web
browser. - This tool supports a wide range of report types including
tabular system, chart format, etc. - The reports can be exported as Excel or PDF file formats for
further analysis. - The report scheduling is a very useful feature for business
administrators. - The dashboard is very easy to use and intuitive. You can even
get multiple reports in a single dashboard at a time.
14. Dataiku
Dataiku is a collaborative open source BI tool. It is specially
used by the data scientists and the people who work on data
science. The business analysts also get a lot of benefit from this
software because of its deep analysis capability. It has both free
and enterprise versions. The free version is forever accessible
with a maximum of 3 users’ support. Even the free version offers
that much flexibility that you don’t have to restrict to a data
limit.
Key Features of Dataiku
- Automated ML features enable the business executives to perform
data analysis without any knowledge of advanced science or
engineering. - This tool can connect to more than 25 different data sources
such as generic protocols and third-party database solutions. - The drag-and-drop data visualization tool helps the users to
create charts and graphs to make their report more attractive and
easy to understand. - Apart from installing the local client on your personal
computer, you can install Dataiku into any cloud servers like
Microsoft Azure, Amazon EC2, Google Cloud, etc.
15. Apache Superset
Apache Superset is an emerging data analysis and visualization
tool[17] for business
intelligence. This open-source BI tool is still in the incubation
stage. This project was started by Airbnb Engineering and Data Science[18] which is a part of
Airbnb inc. This tool was written in the Python-based Flask
framework. Airbnb normally uses this tool with Apache Druid for its
purpose. But Superset can be used with any data source supported by
SQL Alchemy. Though it is a developing tool you will get instant
help from the team if you find any problems.
Key Features of Apache
Superset
- The user interface is very intuitive and easy to use. The
dashboards provide an interactive environment for data
visualization. - The advanced role management feature lets you decide the
authorities for different features. - It has a powerful SQL editor and supports almost all the
popular SQL databases. - There is a huge number of startups using this tool and this is
why you will get great community support.
16. WideStage
WideStage is a simple report creating a tool for your business.
It is popularly known as a self-service business intelligence
software. It can create reports from several SQL databases. You can
directly download and install this web-based tool from their Github
repo. Currently, WideStage is in its second version and it has got
a new and more intuitive user interface with some additional
features.
Key Features of WideStage
- It supports many database types including MySQL, Microsoft SQL
Server, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, etc. - You can access a variety of security features for access
management into your sensitive business data. - WideStage lets your clients use this self-service tool to
create their reports so that your data analytics team can focus on
more crucial things.
17. Orange Data
Mining
Orange Data Mining is more of an open source data science tool[21] than an open-source BI
tool. But if you want a deeper insight into your business data then
Orange is a great option. This tool is mainly used by data
scientists and researchers for data mining. Since it is an
open-source tool your company’s developers can fork it according to
your needs and can make it an outstanding business intelligence
software. Besides, you are getting a wide range of data
visualization feature straight out of the box.
Key Features of Orange Data
Mining
- It features an interactive data visualization tool that can
hierarchical clustering, linear distribution, heatmap generation,
etc. - It has a visual programming environment that lets even
beginners dive deep into data without any serious coding
knowledge. - It even supports visual illustrations from the basic concepts
of data analysis so that you can use this tool to train your data
analysts. - It supports addons for extending features. You can even create
your addons to integrate it with your existing data sources.
18. iReport Designer
iReport Designer is yet another useful open source BI tool from
JasperSoft. As the name suggests this tool will completely change
the way you perform reporting in your company. You can easily
create sophisticated reports with many visual elements by using
this software. You will get huge community support just like any
other software developed by JasperSoft. You will get this tool
bundled with their newly released JasperSoft Studio. But it’s
better to use this standalone software if you will need this only
for reporting.
Key Features of iReport
Designer
- This tool can embed images, charts, bars, graphs, crosstabs,
etc. inside your reports. - It supports a long list of data sources including CSV, XML,
JavaBeans, TableModels, and custom made data sources. - You can generate your business report in different file formats
including HTML, CSV, Excel, Office, etc. - iReport Designer is completely compatible with other JasperSoft
open-source software like JasperReports Server.
19. Query2Report
It is a free and open source enterprise reporting tool desktop.
It is very simple and easy to use tool for business intelligence.
It can create dashboards for reporting environment and perform
reporting based on your company needs. The developer has included
many video tutorials inside their SourceForge repository so that
you don’t need to face any problems. If you want your SQL queries
to transform into attractive looking easily readable reports then
this tool is a must.
Key Features of Query2Report
- This tool supports real-time reporting feature with automatic
refreshing of query data. - This will always keep separate the public and personal
reporting dashboards. - It can integrate with different relational database management
software. - The advanced role management system allows you to distribute
permissions according to the authority.
20. DataCleaner
DataCleaner is a data quality analysis platform. If you want to
analyze your data with some kind of business reporting software you
must transform the data into a readable format. DataCleaner is a
great BI tool for this purpose. The data profiling engine is so
powerful and it can be extended for different other features like
merging, transformation, deduplication, etc.
Key Features of DataCleaner
- It supports almost any database management software including
Oracle, MS SQL Server, PostgreSQL, MySQL, etc. - It can read data from your Excel, CSV, TXT, or any other
spreadsheet tools. - The Pattern Finder feature lets you search for any specific
patterns in textual data. - Duplicate finder and merger is a great service that you can get
from this tool. - After data profiling, it can store the filter data to any
database servers.
Final Thoughts
Data will always be the determining factor of modern businesses.
If your company can derive intelligence from the data, it will
surely succeed. The BI software will help you with all the
processes, from data analysis to generating reports. The above list
of open source BI tools contains tools of different purposes that
can accelerate your business.
Sometimes it’s better to go for the proprietary tools with a
premium subscription model because of the better technical support.
But if you are just starting with your business, then there is
nothing wrong with using free BI tools. Besides, most of them are
as powerful as the paid tools. I hope this article will help you to
choose the best software package for your business. And, don’t
forget to mention the tool that your company relies on upon the
comment section below.
References
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