A survey of open source tools for business intelligence

The industrial use of open source Business Intelligence (BI) tools is not yet common. It is therefore of interest to explore which possibilities are available for open source BI and compare the tools. In this survey paper, we consider the capabilities of a number of open source tools for BI. In the paper, we consider three Extract-Transform-Load (ETL) tools, three On-Line Analytical Processing (OLAP) servers, two CLAP clients, and four database management systems (DBMSs). Further, we describe the licenses that the products are released under. It is argued that the ETL tools are still not very mature for use in industry while the DBMSs axe mature and applicable to real-world projects. The OLAP servers and clients are not as powerful as commercial solutions but may be useful in less demanding projects.