What is Pentaho

Pentaho is an open source Business Intelligence (BI) Suite that comes in with either commercial support (http://www.pentaho.com/) and or community support (http://community.pentaho.com/).

This post provides instructions for the Pentaho community edition suite.

Install Pentaho BI Server 4.5 on Windows 7 x64

Install Java

Your steps may vary slightly as I had an older version of the JDK installed. However, the gist is “just click Next till your done”.

1. Download the Java JDK from http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html.
2. After downloading, double-click the installer, which will be named something like: (the name of your file may vary depending on which version you have downloaded)
3. Click Next.
4. Click Next. Wait for the installation to finish.
5. Click Next. Wait for the JRE installation to finish.
6. Click Continue.
7. Click Next to start the JavaFX SDK Setup.
8. Click Next.
9. Click Close.

Add Java to your PATH

You should now have the Java SDK installed into something like (your exact path may vary based on the version):

C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.7.0_04\bin

1. Click Start.
2. Right-click on Computer, click Properties.
3. In the left pane, click Advanced system settings.
4. Select the Advanced tab, then click Environment Variables…
5. In System Variables, scroll till you find Path.
6. Select Path, click Edit…
7. Add the Java bin folder to  your path by appending ;C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.7.0_04\bin to the end of the Path Variable Value.
8. Click OK.
9. Click New…
10. In Variable name, enter: PENTAHO_JAVA_HOME
11. In Variable value, enter: C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.7.0_04
12. Click OK.
13. Click OK.
14. Click OK.

As last step check that your path is set correctly.

1. Open Powershell.
2. Type java -version.
3. Then type javac -version.
4. For each command above, you should see the correct Java version  (for me its 1.7.0_04)
5. Open a command prompt.
6. Type echo %PENTAHO_JAVA_HOME%
7. You should see the following as output: C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.7.0_04

Note:

If you want to show the value of PENTAHO_JAVA_HOME in PowerShell, then enter:

Get-Childitem env:PENTAHO_JAVA_HOME

Note:

I had to reboot to get this to work.

Install Pentaho BI Server

Now that we have Java installed we can get on with our main task of installing the Pentaho BI Server.

1. Download the Pentaho BI Server from http://wiki.pentaho.com/display/COM/Latest+Stable+Builds. I’m using the current stable build which is biserver-ce-4.5.0-stable.zip.
2. Open Windows Explorer and create new folder: C:\Program Files\Pentaho.
3. Unzip biserver-ce-4.5.0-stable.zip.
4. Next, copy the biserver-ce and administration-console folder into C:\Program Files\Pentaho.

Update the Permissions to allow the server to be run as a developer’s regular user (i.e. not Administrator)

1. In Windows Explorer, navigate to C:\Program Files.
2. Right-click the Pentaho folder, click Properties.
3. Select the Security tab, click Edit.
4. Click Add.
5. Enter the developer’s username, then click OK.
6. In the Allow column, check Full control.
7. Click OK.
8. Click OK.

Start the Pentaho Server

I am not going to cover automatic startup of the Pentaho Server on Windows because my assumption is that some developers choose to run Pentaho on Windows, but that product deployments

1. Open Windows Explorer to C:\Program Files\Pentaho\biserver-ce.
2. Double-click start-pentaho.bat.
3. If the Windows Security Alert dialog box pops up, then click Allow access.

Hint:

I recommend that you resize the command window that displays the Tomcat messages. This will make it easier to read messages that are output by Tomcat.

• In the top left corner of the Window, click the Java icon.
• Click Properties.
• Select the Layout tab.
• Set the Width = 120
• Set the Height = 45
• Click OK.

Login to the Pentaho User Console

1. Open a web browser to http://localhost:8080.
2. Click Evaluation Login and select a user type to login as.

Login to the Pentaho Administration Console

1. Open Windows Explorer to C:\Program Files\Pentaho\administration-console.
2. Double-click start-pac.bat.
3. Open a web browser to http://localhost:8099.
4. Enter a User Name of admin.
5. Enter a Password of password.
6. Click Log In.

That’s it. The core Pentaho BI server is installed and ready for development. However, a good next step is to change the database that Pentaho uses, but we’ll leave that for another post.