Creating a New Analyzer Report

In this exercise of the Pentaho Analyzer you will be creating a report that displays the actual versus budgeted expenses by region for each department in the fictitious Steel Wheels company (SampleData).

Follow the instructions below to start creating an Analyzer report.

  1. In the Pentaho User Console menubar, go to File -> New and select Analyzer Report. Pentaho Analyzer opens.
  2. Select your Schema and Cube from the corresponding lists. For the purposes of this exercise, select SampleData and Quadrant Analysis, respectively.
    Note: The list of available schemas and cubes are provided by your administrator. A schema is the structure of the relational database and includes tables, fields, views, and more. A cube is a data structure that allows information in a database to be analyzed quickly and from multiple perspectives.
  3. Click OK. A blank report appears.
  4. In the list of fields (on the right), click and drag Department to the Analyzer workspace in the left pane. The Department column appears in the workspace.
  5. Click and drag the Budget and Actual fields to the workspace. The columns appear in the workspace in the order in which they were placed.
  6. Right-click the Budget column to display the Edit Column dialog box. Select Column Name and Format -> Currency ($) from the Format list so that your values display as dollar amounts. Repeat this step for the Actual column.
    Note: If you need help to understand the options in any Pentaho Analyzer dialog box, click Help.
  7. Click and drag the Region column to the report. (Read the note below.)
    Note: Notice that the Region column appears in the workspace; however, you want this column to be the first column in the report.

  8. In the workspace, click and drag the Region column to the left of the Department column.

    Pentaho Analyzer is designed to provide you with great flexibility when designing the visual structure of your report.

  9. At this point you have a functioning report and you can view your data in chart form. Click (Switch to Chart Format) to examine your report data in a chart format. The default display is a bar chart but if you click (Choose Another Chart Type) you can select a different chart type to display your data.
  10. Save your report before continuing the exercise. In the Pentaho User Console, click (Save As). When the Save As dialog box appears, save your report as Regional Expense Report under /steel wheels/analysis and click OK.