Pentaho to support Spark for data integration visually

Pentaho Business Analytics 7.1. release includes adaptive execution on any engine for big data processing, starting with Spark; expanded cloud integration with Microsoft Azure HDInsight; enterprise-level security for Hortonworks, and improved in-line visualizations.Pentaho 7.1 supports Spark with virtually all of its data integration steps in a visual drag-and-drop environment, and provides the freedom to choose an execution engine at run-time. Other vendors require users to create Spark-specific data integration logic, often requiring advanced Java programming skills, at a time when developer talent shortages are a reality. With adaptive execution, Pentaho 7.1 makes big data developers two times more productive and expands the profile of technology talent who can work with Spark across the enterprise. While this release starts with Spark support, the architecture sets the stage for users to execute on the best engine for any given data workload in the future, insulating customers from emerging technologies.

“Big data will continue to create complexity, but that shouldn’t inhibit enterprise success,” said Donna Prlich, Chief Product Officer, Pentaho, a Hitachi Group Company. “Teams of data engineers, data scientists and analysts can now work in a single environment that eliminates multiple tools, complex coding and provides a consistent user experience across the data pipeline. This release significantly advances our vision for a single analytic data workflow.”

Pentaho 7.1 recognizes the growing momentum of enterprise cloud adoption with the need for flexible on-premises deployment and processing, especially in big data and IoT environments that use machine learning and AI. Building on current cloud support for Amazon EMR, the new version supports Microsoft Azure HDInsight, Azure SQL and Azure SQL Server, offering more options to store and process big data in hybrid, on premises, and public cloud environments.

Concerns over the lack of comprehensive security and authentication for big data environments are a reality. Pentaho 7.1 builds on its existing enterprise-level security for Cloudera by adding similar security for Hortonworks with Kerberos Impersonation support to protect clusters from intrusion. Pentaho 7.1 also adds Apache Ranger support for authorizations and role-based access to specific data sets and applications for Hortonworks deployments. This ensures business access rules are enforced across Hadoop data and components and extends security support to protect vital customer resources and reduces risk. Providing similar enterprise-level security for both Cloudera and Hortonworks also gives Pentaho customers more options.

Pentaho 7.1 provides even more access to visualizations during data preparation, allowing users to spot check data for quality issues and prototype analytic data at every stage of the data pipeline, without switching in and out of tools or waiting until the very end to find data quality problems. With Pentaho 7.1, users can now interact with heat grids, geo maps, and sunbursts, as well as drill-down into data sets for further exploration. Users can leverage an easy to use and flexible API with full documentation to bring in visualizations from third party libraries such as D3 or FusionCharts, making third party visualizations reusable across the entire Pentaho platform.