Here’s a tutorial on how to get Ext JS’s TreePanel going with Ruby on Rails.

Ext JS Implementation

You’ll start by creating the Tree component in your view. This is an example of how it should look:

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var tree = new Ext.tree.TreePanel({
      useArrows:true,
      autoScroll:true,
      animate:true,
      containerScroll: true,
      // auto create TreeLoader
      loader: new Ext.tree.TreeLoader({dataUrl:'/groups.json', requestMethod: 'GET'}),
 
      root:  new Ext.tree.AsyncTreeNode({
        text: 'Root Node',
        draggable:false,
        disabled: true,
        expandable: false,
        expanded: true,
        id:'source'  
      })
});

The most important line in this code above is line number 7. This will call the URL to retrieve the Tree in Json format. I use a GET request so it will goto my index action in Rails using a Restful design.

Rails Tree Plugin

As you may have noticed from my example I’m using Group as the model for my tree. In your model you should install a tree plugin similar to acts_as_tree so you get access to methods such as group.children.

If your using the above plugin, add this line into your model to specify your model to use the plugin:

# /app/models/group.rb
class Group < ActiveRecord::Base
  acts_as_tree :order => "name", :dependent => :destroy
  ....
end

If you find acts_as_tree to be limited in functionality, there are better tree plugins that I recommend having a look at such as acts_as_nested_set

Rails Model Implementation

For my implementation I needed a boolean function to return true/false if group was a leaf node or not. I added this function into my model.

# /app/models/group.rb
  ...
  def leaf?
    if(children.size == 0)
      false
    else
      true
    end
  end
  ...

Also I added a function to return the root node groups.

  # /app/models/group.rb
  ...
  def self.find_root_nodes
    find(:all, :conditions => ["parent_id IS NULL"])
  end
  ...

Handling JSON requests with Rails

Using a Restful design here. I made my controller return json using .json at the end of the URL. To allow this I added this line to the end of my routes.rb file

# END OF /config/routes.rb
  ...
  map.connect ':controller/:action.:format'
  ...

Rails Controller Implementation

My index action in my controller serves the GET request and spits out json when .json is supplied at the end of the URL. A extra function (get_ext_tree) is required to recursively add the children to a tree node. This function will return JSON in the format required for the Ext JS TreeLoader.

# /app/controllers/groups_controller.rb
class GroupsController < ApplicationController
  def index
      groups = Group.find_root_nodes
      json_data = get_ext_tree(groups,nil)
    end
 
    respond_to do |format|
      format.html  #/groups
      format.json { render :json => json_data } # /groups.json
    end
  end
 
  def get_ext_tree(groups, parent)  
    data = Array.new  
    groups.each { |group|  
      if group.leaf?  
        if data.empty?  
          data =   [{"text"  =>  group.name, "id"  => group.id, "leaf"  => false,  
              "children" => get_ext_tree(group.children,group) }]   
        else  
          data.concat([{"text"  =>  group.name, "id"  => group.id, "leaf"  => false,  
                "children" => get_ext_tree(group.children,group)}])  
        end  
      else  
        data.concat([{"text" => group.name, "id" => group.id, "leaf" => true, "children" => []}])   
      end  
    }  
    return data  
  end
 
end

Resources which are handy when it comes to Pentaho:

• ##pentaho - IRC support channel
• Unofficial Pentaho Wiki
• Official Pentaho Wiki

Extra props to to bugg from ##pentaho!

Assumptions

Before you begin your installation I will assume that you have installed and have running:

• MySql - click here for a tutorial
• Apache ANT - click here for manual

If someone gets the time maybe they can write out the above two steps :)

Directory Structure

When setting up my pentaho install I decided to layout my directory similar to this:

• /opt/tomcat_dir - your tomcat installation directory
• /opt/pentaho - holds pentaho related folders
• /opt/pentaho/pentaho-solutions - holds the pentaho solution files

Step 1: Install and configure the JAVA JDK and JRE

The first step is to first install the latest Java JDK & JRE (1.6 for this tutorial). To install the latest version of the JAVA JDK and JRE, at the terminal prompt type:

   $terminal > sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jdk sun-java6-jre

You will be prompted to install the necessary files, just hit the Y key. Ubuntu will automatically install the JAVA JDK and JRE in the following directory

   /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.06/

To check if it all went well type this at the terminal prompt, it should let you know what version of JAVA you have installed on your Ubuntu box.

   $terminal > java -version

Now before we continue we have to set the JAVA_HOME as an evironment variable (for Tomcat), you can do this two ways:

Method 1 (On the fly)

   $terminal> export JAVA_HOME = "/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.06"

Method 2 (On startup)

   $terminal> sudo vi /etc/profile or /etc/.bashrc

Paste this line at the end

   export JAVA_HOME = "/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.06"

Now we have the JAVA JDK and JRE installed and configured! Lets move onto Tomcat..

Step 2: Installation and configuration of Tomcat

For this tutorial I will be using Tomcat 5.5. Before we install Tomcat, lets create a working directory to dump all the new .tars and .zips we will be downloading.

   $terminal> sudo mkdir work
   $terminal> cd work

To install Tomcat 5.5 at the terminal prompt type the following command, however if you want to download the .tar file directly or from another mirror click here (http://tomcat.apache.org/download-55.cgi):

   $terminal> sudo wget http://apache.mirror.aussiehq.net.au/tomcat/tomcat-5/v5.5.26/bin/apache-tomcat-5.5.26.tar.gz

The next step is to extract the .tar.gz we just downloaded:

   $terminal> sudo tar xvf apache-tomcat-5.5.26.tar.gz

You will now have a directory labelled “apache-tomcat-5.5.26″, lets move this to a more sensible location. If you don’t have /opt/ directory create it by typing the following at the terminal prompt:

   $terminal> sudo mkdir /opt

Then copy the “apache-tomcat-5.5.26″ folder to the /opt/ directory by typing the following at the terminal prompt (make sure you are still in your work directory):

   $terminal> sudo mv apache-tomcat-5.5.26 /opt

The last step is to chmod 777 this new directory, why? I had alot of issue installing at the root level on my ubuntu box in regards to permissions etc, chmod’ing 777 everything fixes it up.

   $terminal> sudo chmod 777 -R /opt/apache-tomcat-5.5.26

• The -R is a recursive function which chmods all sub directories under the main directory.

Phew! So now we have installed the JAVA JDK and JRE and Tomcat, lets move on to getting Pentaho up and running!

Step 3: Installing and configuring Pentaho

We will need to download 4 packages to get our Pentaho installation working on this configuration:

• pentaho_j2ee_deployments-1.7.1.zip
• pentaho_solutions-1.7.1.zip
• Pentaho MySql .sql Sample Script - here
• MySql connector JAVA 5.1.6 - here

Firstly lets download the Pentaho related packages. If you don’t want to use the wget command you can just visit this page and download the above files or just type the following commands at the terminal prompt (make sure you are in your work directory):

   $terminal> sudo wget http://internode.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/pentaho/pentaho_j2ee_deployments-1.7.1.zip
   $terminal> sudo wget http://internode.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/pentaho/pentaho_solutions-1.7.1.zip

Creating the MySql databases

First download the MySql Pentaho Sample .sql script by clicking finding the latest version from here or by running this command (within the work directory):

   $terminal> sudo wget http://source.pentaho.org/svnroot/legacy/pentaho-data/branches/1.7/mysql5/SampleDataDump_MySql.sql

Before logging into MySql to run the script make sure you are in the same directory where the .sql file is located then log into mysql:

   $terminal> mysql -u[username] -p[password]

Then from the mysql prompt type the following in:

   $mysql> source .sql;

This will run the .sql script and create 3 databases:

1. hibernate
2. quartz
3. sampledata

To check if these databases were created run this command:

   $mysql> show databases;

Now exit out of MySql:

   $mysql> exit

Install the MySql Connector

Download the MySql connector from this link or type this at the command prompt (in your work directory):

   $terminal> sudo wget http://dev.mysql.com/get/Downloads/Connector-J/mysql-connector-java-5.1.6.tar.gz/from/http://mysql.mirrors.ilisys.com.au/

Once that has downloaded into your work directory, extract the tar.gz file:

   $terminal> sudo tar xvf mysql-connector-java-5.1.6.tar.gz

Now we will need to copy the mysql-connector-java-5.1.6-bin.jar file to the /opt/apache-tomcat-5.5.26/common/lib/ directory:

   $terminal> sudo cp mysql-connector-java-5.1.6-bin.jar /opt/apache-tomcat-5.5.26/common/lib/

Installing the Pentaho packages

Firstly, lets unzip both the zip files we just downloaded (make sure you in your working directory):

   $terminal> sudo unzip pentaho_j2ee_deployments-1.7.1.zip
   $terminal> sudo unzip pentaho_solutions-1.7.1.zip

If you don’t have UNZIP installed, you can install it by typing this command:

   $terminal> sudo apt-get unzip

Now we will need to user ANT to build our .wars for deployment on Tomcat, navigate to the pentaho_j2ee_deployments directory:

   $terminal> cd pentaho_j2ee_deployments

Now run the following commands from the terminal prompt, after each command is complete you should see a “BUILD SUCCESFUL” message.

   $terminal> ant ant zip-pentaho-style-war
   $terminal> ant zip-pentaho-steel-wheels-style-war
   $terminal> ant zip-pentaho-portal-layout-war
   $terminal> ant war-pentaho-tomcat-mysql

This will create the 4 .wars, now we will need to copy these to our /opt/apache-tomcat-5.5.26/webapps/ directory, to do this run the following commands at the terminal prompt (make sure you are in the pentaho_j2ee_deployments directory when running these):

   $terminal> sudo cp /build/pentaho-wars/*.wars /opt/apache-tomcat-5.5.26/webapps/
   $terminal> sudo cp /build/pentaho-wars/tomcat/mysql/*.wars /opt/apache-tomcat-5.5.26/webapps/

To check if that was succesful type:

   $terminal> ls /opt/apache-tomcat-5.5.26/webapps/

You should see the following files:

1. pentaho.war
2. sw-style.war
3. pentaho-portal-layout.war
4. pentaho-style.war

To deploy these .wars we are going to quickly start up tomcat and shut it down, at the terminal prompt navigate to the /opt/apache-tomcat-5.5.26/bin/ directory and run the ./startup.sh script.

   $terminal> cd /opt/apache-tomcat-5.5.26/bin
   $terminal> ./startup.sh
   $terminal> ./shutdown.sh

Now you will notice that the following directories under the /webapps folder have been created:

1. pentaho/
2. sw-style/
3. pentaho-portal-layout/
4. pentaho-style/

Setting up Pentaho Solutions Navigate back to our work directory and move the “pentaho_solutions” folder to a directory of choice, as you can see at the start of this tutorial I have decided to use the /opt/pentaho directory. So to start off type this at the command prompt:

   $terminal> sudo mv pentaho-solutions/ /opt/pentaho/

Next chmod 777 this directory (it will cause a lot of headaches if you don’t!)

   $terminal> sudo chmod 777 -R /opt/pentaho/pentaho-solutions

Configurations

We are so close! Now we need to tweak a couple configuration settings.

Pentaho configuration

We will need to make sure that Pentaho points to right directory when loading up pentaho-solutions, to do this, navigate to the WEB_INF/ directory under your opt/apache-tomcat-5.5.26/webapps/pentaho/ location.

   $terminal> cd /opt/apache-tomcat-5.5.26/webapps/pentaho/WEB_INF

Then open up the web.xml file for editing

   $terminal> sudo vi web.xml

Find the following passages and make the changes to the bold areas Change this to the directory where you have uncompressed the pentaho-solutions.zip, in this example it is /opt/pentaho/pentaho-solutions

   <context-param>
   <param-name>solution-path</param-name>
   <param-value>/opt/pentaho/pentaho-solutions</param-value>
   </context-param>

If you are accessing your Pentaho installation remotely or if it is installed on a web server change the “localhost” to your server’s ip if not just leave it as “localhost”.

   <context-param>
   <param-name>base-url</param-name>
   <param-value>http://localhost:8080/pentaho/</param-value>
   </context-param>

Pentaho data sources configuration

The first one is to edit the data sources so they point our locally hosted mysql database, navigate to the /conf/ directory under your tomcat directory:

   $terminal> cd /opt/apache-tomcat-5.5.26/conf/

Then open up the server.xml file for editing

   $terminal> sudo vi server.xml

We will need to paste the following piece of code before the </Host> tags (found at the bottom). But before pasting make sure you change the following:

1. Any references to “myserver” to your mysql’s ip or just to “localhost”
2. Replace any instances of username=”pentaho_user” password=”password” to your databases username i.e. root and password for that user.

 <Context path="/pentaho" docbase="webapps/pentaho/">
 <Manager className="org.apache.catalina.session.PersistentManager" saveOnRestart="false"/>
 <Resource name="jdbc/Hibernate" auth="Container" type="javax.sql.DataSource" maxActive="20"
   maxIdle="5" maxWait="10000" username="hibuser" password="password" validationQuery="Select 1"
   factory="org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSourceFactory" driverClassName="com.mysql.jdbc.Driver"
   url="jdbc:mysql://myserver/hibernate" testOnBorrow="true" testWhileIdle="true" timeBetweenEvictionRunsMillis="10000"
   maxEvictableIdleTimeMillis="60000"/>
 <Resource name="jdbc/SampleData" auth="Container" type="javax.sql.DataSource" maxActive="20"
   maxIdle="5" maxWait="10000" username="pentaho_user" password="password" validationQuery="Select 1"
   factory="org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSourceFactory" driverClassName="com.mysql.jdbc.Driver"
   url="jdbc:mysql://myserver/sampledata" testOnBorrow="true" testWhileIdle="true" timeBetweenEvictionRunsMillis="10000"
   maxEvictableIdleTimeMillis="60000"/>
 <Resource name="jdbc/Quartz" auth="Container" type="javax.sql.DataSource" maxActive="20"
   maxIdle="5" maxWait="10000" username="pentaho_user" password="password" validationQuery="Select 1"
   factory="org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSourceFactory" driverClassName="com.mysql.jdbc.Driver"
   url="jdbc:mysql://myserver/quartz" testOnBorrow="true" testWhileIdle="true" timeBetweenEvictionRunsMillis="10000"
   maxEvictableIdleTimeMillis="60000"/>
 <Resource name="jdbc/Shark" auth="Container" type="javax.sql.DataSource" maxActive="20"
   maxIdle="5" maxWait="10000" username="pentaho_user" password="password" validationQuery="Select 1"
   factory="org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSourceFactory" driverClassName="com.mysql.jdbc.Driver"
   url="jdbc:mysql://myserver/shark" testOnBorrow="true" testWhileIdle="true" timeBetweenEvictionRunsMillis="10000"
   maxEvictableIdleTimeMillis="60000"/>
 <Resource name="jdbc/SampleDataAdmin" auth="Container" type="javax.sql.DataSource" maxActive="20"
   maxIdle="5" maxWait="10000" username="pentaho_user" password="password" validationQuery="Select 1"
   factory="org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSourceFactory" driverClassName="com.mysql.jdbc.Driver"
   url="jdbc:mysql://myserver/sampledata" testOnBorrow="true" testWhileIdle="true" timeBetweenEvictionRunsMillis="10000"
   maxEvictableIdleTimeMillis="60000"/>
 <Resource name="jdbc/solution1" auth="Container" type="javax.sql.DataSource" maxActive="20"
   maxIdle="5" maxWait="10000" username="pentaho_user" password="password" validationQuery="Select 1"
   factory="org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSourceFactory" driverClassName="com.mysql.jdbc.Driver"
   url="jdbc:mysql://myserver/sampledata" testOnBorrow="true" testWhileIdle="true" timeBetweenEvictionRunsMillis="10000"
   maxEvictableIdleTimeMillis="60000"/>
 <Resource name="jdbc/solution2" auth="Container" type="javax.sql.DataSource" maxActive="20"
   maxIdle="5" maxWait="10000" username="pentaho_user" password="password" validationQuery="Select 1"
   factory="org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSourceFactory" driverClassName="com.mysql.jdbc.Driver"
   url="jdbc:mysql://myserver/sampledata" testOnBorrow="true" testWhileIdle="true" timeBetweenEvictionRunsMillis="10000"
   maxEvictableIdleTimeMillis="60000"/>
 <Resource name="jdbc/solution3" auth="Container" type="javax.sql.DataSource" maxActive="20"
   maxIdle="5" maxWait="10000" username="pentaho_user" password="password" validationQuery="Select 1"
   factory="org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSourceFactory" driverClassName="com.mysql.jdbc.Driver"
   url="jdbc:mysql://myserver/sampledata" testOnBorrow="true" testWhileIdle="true" timeBetweenEvictionRunsMillis="10000"
   maxEvictableIdleTimeMillis="60000"/>
 <Resource name="jdbc/solution4" auth="Container" type="javax.sql.DataSource" maxActive="20"
   maxIdle="5" maxWait="10000" username="pentaho_user" password="password" validationQuery="Select 1"
   factory="org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSourceFactory" driverClassName="com.mysql.jdbc.Driver"
   url="jdbc:mysql://myserver/sampledata" testOnBorrow="true" testWhileIdle="true" timeBetweenEvictionRunsMillis="10000"
   maxEvictableIdleTimeMillis="60000"/>
 <Resource name="jdbc/solution5" auth="Container" type="javax.sql.DataSource" maxActive="20"
   maxIdle="5" maxWait="10000" username="pentaho_user" password="password" validationQuery="Select 1"
   factory="org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSourceFactory" driverClassName="com.mysql.jdbc.Driver"
   url="jdbc:mysql://myserver/sampledata" testOnBorrow="true" testWhileIdle="true" timeBetweenEvictionRunsMillis="10000"
   maxEvictableIdleTimeMillis="60000"/>
 <Resource name="jdbc/datasource1" auth="Container" type="javax.sql.DataSource" maxActive="20"
   maxIdle="5" maxWait="10000" username="pentaho_user" password="password" validationQuery="Select 1"
   factory="org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSourceFactory" driverClassName="com.mysql.jdbc.Driver"
   url="jdbc:mysql://myserver/sampledata" testOnBorrow="true" testWhileIdle="true" timeBetweenEvictionRunsMillis="10000"
   maxEvictableIdleTimeMillis="60000"/>
 <Resource name="jdbc/datasource2" auth="Container" type="javax.sql.DataSource" maxActive="20"
   maxIdle="5" maxWait="10000" username="pentaho_user" password="password" validationQuery="Select 1"
   factory="org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSourceFactory" driverClassName="com.mysql.jdbc.Driver"
   url="jdbc:mysql://myserver/sampledata" testOnBorrow="true" testWhileIdle="true" timeBetweenEvictionRunsMillis="10000"
   maxEvictableIdleTimeMillis="60000"/>
 <Resource name="jdbc/datasource3" auth="Container" type="javax.sql.DataSource" maxActive="20"
   maxIdle="5" maxWait="10000" username="pentaho_user" password="password" validationQuery="Select 1"
   factory="org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSourceFactory" driverClassName="com.mysql.jdbc.Driver"
   url="jdbc:mysql://myserver/sampledata" testOnBorrow="true" testWhileIdle="true" timeBetweenEvictionRunsMillis="10000"
   maxEvictableIdleTimeMillis="60000"/>
 <Resource name="jdbc/datasource4" auth="Container" type="javax.sql.DataSource" maxActive="20"
   maxIdle="5" maxWait="10000" username="pentaho_user" password="password" validationQuery="Select 1"
   factory="org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSourceFactory" driverClassName="com.mysql.jdbc.Driver"
   url="jdbc:mysql://myserver/sampledata" testOnBorrow="true" testWhileIdle="true" timeBetweenEvictionRunsMillis="10000"
   maxEvictableIdleTimeMillis="60000"/>
 <Resource name="jdbc/datasource5" auth="Container" type="javax.sql.DataSource" maxActive="20"
   maxIdle="5" maxWait="10000" username="pentaho_user" password="password" validationQuery="Select 1"
   factory="org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSourceFactory" driverClassName="com.mysql.jdbc.Driver"
   url="jdbc:mysql://myserver/sampledata" testOnBorrow="true" testWhileIdle="true" timeBetweenEvictionRunsMillis="10000"
   maxEvictableIdleTimeMillis="60000"/>
  </Context>

The last data source to edit is the hibernate configuration, so navigate to the directory where the hibernate configuration file is located:

   $terminal> cd /opt/apache-tomcat-5.5.26/webapps/pentaho/WEB-INF/classes/

Then open up the hibernate.cfg.xml file for editing

   $terminal> sudo vi hibernate.cfg.xml

Find the following areas in the file and edit them (seen in bold below):

1. Any references to “myserver” to your mysql’s ip or just to “localhost”
2. Change hibuser to your MySql username i.e. root
3. Change password to your MySql password

   <property name="connection.driver_class">com.mysql.jdbc.Driver</property>
   <property name="connection.url">jdbc:mysql://myserver:3306/hibernate</property>
   <property name="dialect">org.pentaho.repository.MySQL5InnoDBDialect</property>
   <property name="connection.username">hibuser</property>
   <property name="connection.password">password</property>
   <property name="connection.pool_size">10</property>
   <property name="show_sql">false</property>
   <property name="hibernate.jdbc.use_streams_for_binary">true</property>

Step 4: Running Pentaho

Finally we are here! Navigate to the bin directory under your Tomcat installation:

   $terminal> cd /opt/apache-tomcat-5.5.26/bin

Then issue the ./startup.sh command

   $terminal> ./startup.sh

   Now, open up a web browser and type in:

1. http://localhost:8080/pentaho (if you are hosting locally)
2. http://yourip:8080/pentaho (if you are hosting remotely)

You should now have a working installation of Pentaho deployed with Tomcat on a MySql database!

Finishing Notes

I would like to thank bugg_tb for his contribution to the inital version of this wiki. If you are experiencing maxpermsize errors run the following commands or put them in your ./profile ./bashrc files:

JAVA_OPTS="$JAVA_OPTS -Xms128m -Xmx512m -XX:PermSize=32m -XX:MaxPermSize=128m -Xss2m"

JAVA_OPTS="$JAVA_OPTS -XX:+UseConcMarkSweepGC -XX:+CMSClassUnloadingEnabled -XX:+CMSPermGenSweepingEnabled"

Don’t forget to sudo!

After clicking on the PivotTable and PivotChart Report… option the first step of the wizard will ask you where is the data you want to analyze, make sure you click the External Data Source radio button.

For the second step, click on the Get Data… button.

From the Choose Data Source dialog box, double click on the <New Data Source> option.

A Create New Data Source dialog box will , type in a name for your New Data Source (in this example I have named mine, sample_data_source), the driver drop down list will now be active. The option we need is the Microsoft Text Driver (*.txt, *.csv), select this option.

For the third option we need to specify the directory where the .txt or .csv file is located, click on the Connect button, then click on the Select Directory button and from the file browser navigate and select the directory which contains your text files.

Now the directory should be visible under the Create New Data Source dialog box.

The last step is to select a default table, I know it says it is optional but I recommend it’s best to do this now so you don’t encounter problems down the line. The drop down box should have all the .txt and .csv files listed under the directory we selected previously.

Select the text file you want to base your Pivot Table on and click the OK button. Now you should be able to see under the Sample Data Source menu the data source we just created, select it and click on the OK button.

Now you will be take through all the standard steps that follow setting up a Pivot Table on an External Data Source which I have gone through in detail for these tutorials.

That’s how you create a Pivot Table on a flat text file!

Enjoy!

In your Rails directory open the file /vendor/rails/railties/lib/commands/servers/webrick.rb (or where you have installed Rails):

...
OPTIONS = {
  :port         => 3000,
  :ip           => "0.0.0.0",
  :environment  => (ENV['RAILS_ENV'] || "development").dup,
  :server_root  => File.expand_path(RAILS_ROOT + "/public_html/"),
  :server_type  => WEBrick::SimpleServer,
  :charset      => "UTF-8",
  :mime_types   => WEBrick::HTTPUtils::DefaultMimeTypes,
  :debugger     => false
}
...

You may change the settings for WeBrick including the port, environment and server root to use. Very handy stuff!

Where is it?

Firstly Open up a Blank SQL Worksheet, to do this click on the icon found on the toolbar at the top, then select a connection you would like to build your query on. In the example below I’m going to build my query on a connection called EARTH_ORCL.

You should now see a new tab appear which will be labelled the name of your connection.

Next right click in the area where you would type your SQL query and select the Query option.

That’s it! You should now be able to see the Query Builder window.

Layout

Below is an overlay of the layout of the query builder you might need to click on the image to open up a larger version.

Building a Query

The query can be built in two different sections:

• SELECT Columns Tab : Where the SELECT part of your statement is built
• Create Where Clause Tab : Where the WHERE part of your statement is built

Lets start with the first tab.

Select Columns

You can do more than just create the SELECT part of your SQL statement, in this area you are also able to perform joins! So lets get started…

Drag and drop a table from the left hand side pane to the right hand side area, the table should now appear in the right hand side area along with the columns available.

To select which colums you want in your SELECT statement click on the check boxes next to the columns or click on the check box available at the top to select all columns (or *). In my example I have only chosen four columns.

Now, I need to join this table with another table, to do this drag and drop another table onto the same area. Then drag and drop a column onto the other column which you would like to perform the join on.

Once you have dropped the link, you should now see a join has been completed, I’m going to select only one field from the second table.

You can change the properties of the join by right clicking on it and selecting one of the options available.

Now we should be able to see what the SELECT part of our SQL statement looks like, click on the Show SQL tab. It doesn’t look pretty but it will do for now, lets move onto the WHERE statement!

Create Where Clause

Click on the Create Where Clause and you should notice a blank WHERE clause already setup, there are three parts to this blank WHERE clause:

In my example I will first select the P_CODE column from the AR_POSTCODE_GEO table.

Then from the operator drop down box I will select contains.

To finish of this WHERE clause I will enter my condition.

There you have it, I have just created a WHERE clause for my SQL statement, clicking on the Show SQL tab will represent what we have built so far:

Adding more Conditions

You can add more conditions by right clicking in the Create Where Clause tab’s area and choosing the Add Condition option.

After adding a second condition, you will notice that a conditional operator drop down box will appear on the left hand side.

There are four different conidtional options available :

Nesting Conditions

The great feature of the WHERE clause is that you can nest them, right click on the operational condition you have set up and a menu will pop up asking to insert a condition.

As you can see, I have inserted an OR condition and it has nested the AND statement.

For this example I’m going to keep it simple and use only one WHERE condition.

Viewing Results

To see what the final output of the SQL statement you have built is, click on the View Results tab and then click on the Green play button.

The query which was just built should display as a data set :

You can also set the query to refresh automatically by using the Refresh: drop down box :

After you happy with the query you have built and the resulting data set which is produced, click on the Apply button, this will bring back to the SQL worksheet for the database we were working on and have the SQL statement laid out!

Looks ugly? To format it hit CTRL + B and it should be formatted perfectly now.

IMPORTANT NOTE!
Once you create a query using the query builder you can not use query builder to edit it, you will have to start from the beginning, so make sure you data set is correct before clicking on the Apply button!

So that’s how you can use the query builder within Oracle’s SQL Developer, did I forget to mention that it’s free?

Click here to download SQL Developer

Enjoy!

Firstly open up VLC and the click on Settings > Preferences.

Now follow these steps in the Preferences dialog box:

1. Expand the Input / Codecs option
2. Expand the Access Modules option
3. Click on the File option
4. Check the Advanced Options check box in the bottom right hand corner

Your Preferences dialog box should look now look like this:

You will see that the Caching value in ms is set to 300 ms. That means that VLC only caches (pre-loads) 300ms or 0.3 seconds of video playback which is not a lot of time especially if you are trying to stream movie length DivX rips. Change this value to a more reasonable amount, I set mine to 3000 ms (3 seconds) and click on the Save button.

Now try and play your video, you should have seamless play without any hitches, if you still do try increasing the Caching value in ms value, the only cons of increasing this value are seeing increases in loads times when:

• Loading the file
• Playing from a Pause state
• Skipping and searching through the video

Another way around this problem is to just use an Ethernet cable

Enjoy!

I thought it would be good to go over some resources for all the latest and past Trek news that I use and hopefully have you also remove StarTrek.com from your bookmarks.

Time to log onto a Star Trek forum that actually works…

• TrekMovie.com - For all the latest news on the new Trek movie and Trek related releases
• MemoryAlpha.org - A great updated Wiki and also has a very active community forum
• Gateworld.net - Have a great Star Trek and MASSIVE Stargate community
• TrekToday.com - A Trek news site which is just a large RSS feed

Hopefully these links can quench your thirst for up to date Trek news.

Enjoy!

Here is a summarized list of the products below:

• Screen Capturing
  • MWSnap : Product Homepage
• Image Editing
  • Paint.NET : Product Homepage
• Querying and Data Extraction
  • SQL Developer (Oracle) : Product Homepage
• Text Editor
  • PSPad Editor : Product Hompage
• Statistical Related
  • R Project : Product Hompage

MWSnap

Documentation and training documents can get tedious when you need to provide screen shots of examples. MWSnap is the best tool out there for all your screen capturing needs! With hot keys and drag and drop capture areas - this is definitely the holy grail of screen capturing tools.

MWSnap’s last release was way back in 2002 but this works perfectly with XP (it isn’t 100% in Vista though).

• Product Homepage
  

Paint.NET

An answer to a free Adobe Photoshop! When trying to create custom images or touch up any images Paint.NET is a great free application, it contains lots of filters and plug ins and is supported on XP and Vista!

• Product Homepage

SQL Developer

A product from Oracle, SQL Developer can support Access, MySQL, SQL Server with Querying and Data Extraction. The great thing about this tool is that it also includes a Query Builder option for all the novice SQL programmers. SQL Developer can be installed on XP, Vista, OS X and Linux.

• Product Homepage

PSPad

PSPad supports multiple coding languages and can edit anything and everything, it also has a great inbuilt FTP client. This is great for opening those large text and CSV data dumps! Runs on both XP and Vista.

• Product Hompage

R Project

For all your statistical minded folks this is a great open source tool for performing basic to advanced statistical analysis and supports numerous community created plug ins. I have now replaced SPSS with this tool! Runs on Linux, OS X, XP and Vista.

• Product Hompage

If you have any other free software that helps you as an analyst comment them!

Enjoy!

Due to a bug with Netbeans 6.1 you must have the following versions of gems installed:

• ruby-debug-ide 0.1.10
• ruby-debug-base 0.10.0

This bug will be resolved in Netbeans 6.5, to allow support for newer versions of the gems.

Install the required gems

Install the two gems via gem command:

gem install ruby-debug-ide -v 0.1.10
gem install ruby-debug-base -v 0.10.0

If you need to uninstall newer versions of the gems, you can uninstall by:

gem uninstall ruby-debug-ide -v 0.2.0
gem uninstall ruby-debug-base -v 0.10.1

Once installed, when you open up Netbeans goto, Tools -> Ruby Platforms in the menu and select click Autodetect Platforms. Your screen should look similar to this: (Note: MacOSX setup)

Inserting a Break Point

You can insert break points in your Ruby code and in your views. You can simply add one by clicking the line number on the left side of the line of code you wish the debugger to stop.

Debug Your File

Simply right-click your code and select Debug “<filename>”.

Your default browser should attempt to load the page, and if you go back into Netbeans you can see information about the break point and the current local variables at the break point.

Debug Toolbar

You have access to your normal debug functions such as Step In/Out, Continue etc, via the Netbeans Debug toolbar.

The Formulas

To use the AND operator use the following format:

= IF( AND( logical_1, logical_2, ... ), TRUE, FALSE )

To use the OR operator use the following format:

= IF( OR( logical_1, logical_2, ... ), TRUE, FALSE )

Simple huh? Lets put this to practice!

Example #1 - Using AND

I have the following data set which shows the amount of new and cancelled customers by Country.

I will create a new column called Target and I want this column to follow these conditions:

1. New customers has to be greater than 5
   AND
2. Cancel customers has to be less than 2

In my new column I enter the following formula :

= IF( AND( B4 > 5, C4 < 2 ), "Pass Target", "Failed Target" )

As a screen shot:

After copying this formula down for the rest of the Target column:

In SQL terms the formula would look like this:

SELECT * FROM table WHERE NEW > 5 AND CANCEL < 2

You can also add as many conditions to the AND() formula.

Example #2 - Using OR

We will use the same data set from above in this example and replace the AND operator with OR.

In the Target column I want the condition to be :

1. New customers has to be greater than 5
   OR
2. Cancel customers has to be less than 2

In my new column I enter the following formula :

= IF( OR( B4 > 5, C4 < 2 ), "Pass Target", "Failed Target" )

As a screen shot:

After copying this formula down for the rest of the Target column:

In SQL terms the formula would look like this:

SELECT * FROM table WHERE NEW > 5 OR CANCEL < 2

You can also add as many conditions to the OR() formula.

Download this example as an Excel Workbook

If you have any other ways of approaching this leave a comment!

Enjoy!