"Drilling" in to the detail with Pentaho

"Drilling".....(with respect to Business Intelligence applications and Information Technology). Where did that word come from? What does it mean? What can it mean? I am sure you have heard the phrase "Drill down to detail" before, but you may have also heard "Drill Up", "Drill Out", "Drill Across", "Drill In" and "Drill Through" and don't forget "Drill Anywhere". In general, it means to simply move from summary level information to underlying detail data, either within its current data set or even outside to another data set. Its main purpose is to allow one to easily view summarized information in the form of a chart, table or some graphical visualization with the added ability to "click" on a value, series or region and "drill in" to the next level of detail or out to some other dimension. "Drilling" allows business users to make informed decisions quickly without having to page through sheets of raw data. For example, summarized sales revenue for the year 2010 is $200K, but upon drilling down we see that $175K was brought in by 3 out of 4 regions, leaving 1 region with very low numbers. This now exposes a single region as being an outlier or a entity that needs focused attention. The power of Business Intelligence applications at work, turning raw data into actionable information.

The Pentaho BI Suite can provide "Drilling" in a number of ways depending on which module you deploy. We will explore each of these in this article..........read more about it here at the Pentaho Evaluation Sandbox.

http://sandbox.pentaho.com/2010/11/drilling-in-to-the-details-with-pentaho/

Regards,

Michael Tarallo
Director of Sales Engineering
Pentaho