Viva Libre Office

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The Document Foundation is happy to announce the release candidate of
LibreOffice 3.3.1. This release candidate is the first in a series of
frequent bugfix releases on top of our LibreOffice 3.3 product. Please
be aware that LibreOffice 3.3.1 RC1 is not yet ready for production
use, you should continue to use LibreOffice for that.

http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/announce/msg00028.html

Following is the list of changes against LibreOffice 3.3:

Key changes at a glance:

* Numerous translation updates
* new mimetype icons for LibreOffice – explained here:
http://luxate.blogspot.com/2011/01/not-even-included-but-already-improved.html
* quite a few crasher fixes

Detailed change log:

* translation updates
* Removed old/unmaintained icon themes
* Fix for https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=664516: Don’t
use a reference or the default formula string will be changed
* Install bash completion for oo* wrappers when enabled
(https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=665402)
* Build fix: get the stlport compat workaround working for gcc 4.6.0
* Build fix: no ddraw.h or ddraw.lib in the June 2010 DirectX SDK,
removed usage
* Windows installer: padded nologobanner.bmp, new size is 102×58
* removed gd – Gaelic, ky – Kirghiz, pap – Papiamento, ti – Tigrinya,
ms – Malay, ps – Pashto, ur – Urdu. UI localization does not exist
in these languages. So it makes no sense to ship packages.
* Build fix: pass thru PYTHON, found by configure. Will be used by
filter/source/config/fragments/makefile.mk.
* Upgraded libwpd (WordPerfect filter) to 0.9.1
* Fixed BrOffice Windows start menu branding
* Removed language code ‘kid’. kid is not Koshin, but key id pseudo
language which is good for debugging UI but should no be included
in the product
* Added ca_XV and ast language/local name and description
* Fixed incorrect page number in page preview mode
(https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33155). When the
window is large enough to show several ‘Page X’ strings,
the page number was not properly incremented.
* Fixed incorrect import of cell attributes from Excel
documents. When a cell with non-default formatting attribute starts
with non-first row in a column, the filter would incorrectly apply
the same format to all the cells above it if they didn’t have any
formats.
* Ubuntu: fix for lp#696527 – enable human icon theme in LibreOffice
* Fix for https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=673819 crash on
changing position of drawing object in header.
* Changed OpenOffice.org to LibreOffice in nsplugin
* Added Occitan dictionary
* Added Ukrainian dictionaries
* Fix window focus for langpack installation on Mac –
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33056
* Added/modified NLPsolver translations from Pootle
* Fix for https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=655763
* Fix for RTF export crasher
(https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=656503)
* Use LibreOffice as product name for EPS Creator header
* Parse svg ‘color’ property (fixes
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33551)
* Use double instead of float in writerfilter import
* Build fix: use PYTHON as passed through by set_soenv.in.
* Fix for https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33237 remove
debug line
* Fix for https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33237 – fixes
ole object import for writer (docx)
* Fix for https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33249
rename OOo -> LibO on Getting Support Page
* Fix ooxml import: handle css::table::BorderLine in addition to
css::table::BorderLine2 That means that table cell properties are
correctly set on import again.
* Fix for https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33258
wikihelp: Improve the check for existence of the localized help.
* Fix for https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33994 – fixes
several crashes around config UNO API
* Fix for https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=30879
* Fix for https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=32872
Implementation names weren’t matching with xcu.
* Fix: don’t pushback and process a corrupt extension
* Fix: wikihelp – do not check for existence of the localized
help. In case we do not have the help installed, it is up to the
online service to decide the fallback in case a language version is
not available.
* Fix README: change su urpmi to sudo urpmi for Mandriva section
* Fix README formatting –
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=32741 – using CRLF
instead of LF on WIN platform
* Fix README: word wrap at column 75 for better readability
* Build fix: KDE3 library search order
(https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=32797). Use LINKFLAGS
instead of STDLIBS.
* Start using technical.dic instead of oracle.dic
(https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=31798)
* Build fix: add explicit QRegion* for clipRegion to fix compile of
kde backend
* Cleanup: removed obsolete m_bSingleAltPress
* Remove the menu when Left Alt Key was pressed for GTK
* Fix for https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33459: use
year of era in long format for zh_TW by default
* Fix wrong collation for Catalan language
* Fix for https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=31271 wrong
line break with “(”
* Fix for https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=32561 – crash
when iterating over the database types.
* Default currency for Estonia should be Euro – fixes
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33160
* Avoid a pointless GetHelpText() call in the toolbox. Fixes
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33315. GetHelpText()
can be quite heavy, see
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33088.
* Paint toolbar handle positioned properly
(https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=32558)
* Build fix: move cxxabi.h after stl headers to workaround gcc 4.6.0
and stlport
* Fix for https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33355
manipulate also the C runtime’s environment
* Fix for CTL/Other Default Font #i25247#, #i25561#, #i48064#,
#i92341#
* RTF export crasher
(https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=656503)
* Fixed an infinite loop in RTF exporter
* UI: translations need more space on word count dialog, made space
for it.
* Fix for https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=660816 improve
formfield checkbox binary export (and import)

Again a BIG Thank You!

Again whats Libre Office

What does LibreOffice give you?

Writer is the word processor inside LibreOffice. Use it for everything, from dashing off a quick letter to producing an entire book with tables of contents, embedded illustrations, bibliographies and diagrams. The while-you-type auto-completion, auto-formatting and automatic spelling checking make difficult tasks easy (but are easy to disable if you prefer). Writer is powerful enough to tackle desktop publishing tasks such as creating multi-column newsletters and brochures. The only limit is your imagination.

Calc tames your numbers and helps with difficult decisions when you’re weighing the alternatives. Analyze your data with Calc and then use it to present your final output. Charts and analysis tools help bring transparency to your conclusions. A fully-integrated help system makes easier work of entering complex formulas. Add data from external databases such as SQL or Oracle, then sort and filter them to produce statistical analyses. Use the graphing functions to display large number of 2D and 3D graphics from 13 categories, including line, area, bar, pie, X-Y, and net – with the dozens of variations available, you’re sure to find one that suits your project.

Impress is the fastest and easiest way to create effective multimedia presentations. Stunning animation and sensational special effects help you convince your audience. Create presentations that look even more professional than the standard presentations you commonly see at work. Get your collegues’ and bosses’ attention by creating something a little bit different.

Draw lets you build diagrams and sketches from scratch. A picture is worth a thousand words, so why not try something simple with box and line diagrams? Or else go further and easily build dynamic 3D illustrations and special effects. It’s as simple or as powerful as you want it to be.

Base is the database front-end of the LibreOffice suite. With Base, you can seamlessly integrate your existing database structures into the other components of LibreOffice, or create an interface to use and administer your data as a stand-alone application. You can use imported and linked tables and queries from MySQL, PostgreSQL or Microsoft Access and many other data sources, or design your own with Base, to build powerful front-ends with sophisticated forms, reports and views. Support is built-in or easily addable for a very wide range of database products, notably the standardly-provided HSQL, MySQL, Adabas D, Microsoft Access and PostgreSQL.

Math is a simple equation editor that lets you lay-out and display your mathematical, chemical, electrical or scientific equations quickly in standard written notation. Even the most-complex calculations can be understandable when displayed correctly. E=mc2.

LibreOffice also comes configured with a PDF file creator, meaning you can distribute documents that you’re sure can be opened and read by users of almost any computing device or operating system.

Download LibreOffice now and try it out today.

http://www.libreoffice.org/features/

 

GrapheR

GNU General Public License
Image via Wikipedia

GrapherR

GrapheR is a Graphical User Interface created for simple graphs.

Depends: R (>= 2.10.0), tcltk, mgcv
Description: GrapheR is a multiplatform user interface for drawing highly customizable graphs in R. It aims to be a valuable help to quickly draw publishable graphs without any knowledge of R commands. Six kinds of graphs are available: histogram, box-and-whisker plot, bar plot, pie chart, curve and scatter plot.
License: GPL-2
LazyLoad: yes
Packaged: 2011-01-24 17:47:17 UTC; Maxime
Repository: CRAN
Date/Publication: 2011-01-24 18:41:47

More information about GrapheR at CRAN
Path: /cran/newpermanent link

Advantages of using GrapheR

  • It is bi-lingual (English and French) and can import in text and csv files
  • The intention is for even non users of R, to make the simple types of Graphs.
  • The user interface is quite cleanly designed. It is thus aimed as a data visualization GUI, but for a more basic level than Deducer.
  • Easy to rename axis ,graph titles as well use sliders for changing line thickness and color

Disadvantages of using GrapheR

  • Lack of documentation or help. Especially tips on mouseover of some options should be done.
  • Some of the terms like absicca or ordinate axis may not be easily understood by a business user.
  • Default values of color are quite plain (black font on white background).
  • Can flood terminal with lots of repetitive warnings (although use of warnings() function limits it to top 50)
  • Some of axis names can be auto suggested based on which variable s being chosen for that axis.
  • Package name GrapheR refers to a graphical calculator in Mac OS – this can hinder search engine results

Using GrapheR

  • Data Input -Data Input can be customized for CSV and Text files.
  • GrapheR gives information on loaded variables (numeric versus Factors)
  • It asks you to choose the type of Graph 
  • It then asks for usual Graph Inputs (see below). Note colors can be customized (partial window). Also number of graphs per Window can be easily customized 
  • Graph is ready for publication



R is Ready for Business™

A new 5 page brochure from Revolution Analytics. Not that slick and some marketing under-kill (which frankly is a surprise)- but I guess Revolution Analytics does not have a full time graphics designer to help with it’s collateral.

Take a look if you are curious how and why R is getting more and more ready for business.

RWui :Creating R Web Interfaces on the go

Here is a great R application created by http://sysbio.mrc-bsu.cam.ac.uk

R Wui for creating R Web Interfaces

its been there for some time now- but presumably R Apache is more well known.

From-

http://sysbio.mrc-bsu.cam.ac.uk/Rwui/tutorial/Rwui_Rnews_final.pdf

The web application Rwui is used to create web interfaces  for running R scripts. All the code is generated automatically so that a fully functional web interface for an R script can be downloaded and up and running in a matter of minutes.

Rwui is aimed at R script writers who have scripts that they want people unversed in R to use. The script writer uses Rwui to create a web application that will run their R script. Rwui allows the script writer to do this without them having to do any web application programming, because Rwui generates all the code for them.

The script writer designs the web application to run their R script by entering information on a sequence of web pages. The script writer then downloads the application they have created and installs it on their own server.

http://sysbio.mrc-bsu.cam.ac.uk/Rwui/tutorial/Technical_Report.pdf

Features of web applications created by Rwui

  1. Whole range of input items available if required – text boxes, checkboxes, file upload etc.
  2. Facility for uploading of an arbitrary number of files (for example, microarray replicates).
  3. Facility for grouping uploaded files (for example, into ‘Diseased’ and ‘Control’ microarray data files).
  4. Results files displayed on results page and available for download.
  5. Results files can be e-mailed to the user.
  6. Interactive results files using image maps.
  7. Repeat analyses with different parameters and data files – new results added to results list, as a link to the corresponding results page.
  8. Real time progress information (text or graphical) displayed when running the application.

Requirements

In order to use the completed web applications created by Rwui you will need:

  1. A Java webserver such as Tomcat version 5.5 or later.
  2. Java version 1.5
  3. R – a version compatible with your R script(s).

Using Rwui

Using Rwui to create a web application for an R script simply involves:

  1. Entering details about your Rscript on a sequence of web pages.
  2. Rwui is quite flexible so you can backtrack, edit and insert, as you design your application.
  3. Rwui then generates the web application, which is Java based and platform independent.
  4. The application can be downloaded either as a .zip or .tgz file.
  5. Unpacked, the download contains all the source code and a .war file.
  6. Once the .war file is copied to the Tomcat webapps directory, the application is ready to use.
  7. Application details are saved in an ‘application definition file’ for reuse and modification.
Interested-
go click and check out a new web app from http://sysbio.mrc-bsu.cam.ac.uk/Rwui/ in a matter of minutes
Also see

Complex Event Processing- SASE Language

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Complex Event Processing (CEP- not to be confused by Circular Probability Error) is defined processing many events happening across all the layers of an organization, identifying the most meaningful events within the event cloud, analyzing their impact, and taking subsequent action in real time.

Software supporting CEP are-

Oracle http://www.oracle.com/us/technologies/soa/service-oriented-architecture-066455.html

Oracle CEP is a Java application server for the development and deployment of high-performance event driven applications. It can detect patterns in the flow of events and message payloads, often based on filtering, correlation, and aggregation across event sources, and includes industry leading temporal and ordering capabilities. It supports ultra-high throughput (1 million/sec++) and microsecond latency.

Tibco is also trying to get into this market (it claims to have a 40 % market share in the public CEP market 😉 though probably they have not measured the DoE and DoD as worthy of market share yet

– see webcast by TIBCO ‘s head here http://www.tibco.com/products/business-optimization/complex-event-processing/default.jsp

and product info here-http://www.tibco.com/products/business-optimization/complex-event-processing/businessevents/default.jsp

TIBCO is the undisputed leader in complex event processing (CEP) software with over 40 percent market share, according to a recent IDC Study.

A good explanation of how social media itself can be used as an analogy for CEP is given in this SAS Global Paper

http://support.sas.com/resources/papers/proceedings10/040-2010.pdf

You can see a report on Predictive Analytics and Data Mining  in q1 2010 also from SAS’s website  at –http://www.sas.com/news/analysts/forresterwave-predictive-analytics-dm-104388-0210.pdf

A very good explanation on architecture involved is given by SAS CTO Keith Collins here on SAS’s Knowledge Exchange site,

http://www.sas.com/knowledge-exchange/risk/four-ways-divide-conquer.html

What it is: Methods 1 through 3 look at historical data and traditional architectures with information stored in the warehouse. In this environment, it often takes months of data cleansing and preparation to get the data ready to analyze. Now, what if you want to make a decision or determine the effect of an action in real time, as a sale is made, for instance, or at a specific step in the manufacturing process. With streaming data architectures, you can look at data in the present and make immediate decisions. The larger flood of data coming from smart phones, online transactions and smart-grid houses will continue to increase the amount of data that you might want to analyze but not keep. Real-time streaming, complex event processing (CEP) and analytics will all come together here to let you decide on the fly which data is worth keeping and which data to analyze in real time and then discard.

When you use it: Radio-frequency identification (RFID) offers a good user case for this type of architecture. RFID tags provide a lot of information, but unless the state of the item changes, you don’t need to keep warehousing the data about that object every day. You only keep data when it moves through the door and out of the warehouse.

The same concept applies to a customer who does the same thing over and over. You don’t need to keep storing data for analysis on a regular pattern, but if they change that pattern, you might want to start paying attention.

Figure  4: Traditional architecture vs. streaming architecture

Figure 4: Traditional architecture vs. streaming architecture

 

In academia  here is something called SASE Language

  • A rich declarative event language
  • Formal semantics of the event language
  • Theorectical underpinnings of CEP
  • An efficient automata-based implementation

http://sase.cs.umass.edu/

and

http://avid.cs.umass.edu/sase/index.php?page=navleft_1col

Financial Services

The query below retrieves the total trading volume of Google stocks in the 4 hour period after some bad news occurred.

PATTERN SEQ(News a, Stock+ b[ ])WHERE   [symbol]    AND	a.type = 'bad'    AND	b[i].symbol = 'GOOG' WITHIN  4 hoursHAVING  b[b.LEN].volume < 80%*b[1].volumeRETURN  sum(b[ ].volume)

The next query reports a one-hour period in which the price of a stock increased from 10 to 20 and its trading volume stayed relatively stable.

PATTERN	SEQ(Stock+ a[])WHERE 	 [symbol]   AND	  a[1].price = 10   AND	  a[i].price > a[i-1].price   AND	  a[a.LEN].price = 20            WITHIN  1 hourHAVING	avg(a[].volume) ≥ a[1].volumeRETURN	a[1].symbol, a[].price

The third query detects a more complex trend: in an hour, the volume of a stock started high, but after a period of price increasing or staying relatively stable, the volume plummeted.

PATTERN SEQ(Stock+ a[], Stock b)WHERE 	 [symbol]   AND	  a[1].volume > 1000   AND	  a[i].price > avg(a[…i-1].price))   AND	  b.volume < 80% * a[a.LEN].volume           WITHIN  1 hourRETURN	a[1].symbol, a[].(price,volume), b.(price,volume)

(note from Ajay-

 

I was not really happy about the depth of resources on CEP available online- there seem to be missing bits and pieces in both open source, academic and corporate information- one reason for this is the obvious military dual use of this technology- like feeds from Satellite, Audio Scans, etc)

Jim Goodnight on Open Source- and why he is right -sigh

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Jim Goodnight – grand old man and Godfather of the Cosa Nostra of the BI/Database Analytics software industry said recently on open source in BI (btw R is generally termed in business analytics and NOT business intelligence software so these remarks were more apt to Pentaho and Jaspersoft )

Asked whether open source BI and data integration software from the likes of Jaspersoft, Pentaho and Talend is a growing threat, [Goodnight] said: “We haven’t noticed that a lot. Most of our companies need industrial strength software that has been tested, put through every possible scenario or failure to make sure everything works correctly.”

quotes from Jim Goodnight are courtesy Jason’s  story here:
http://www.cbronline.com/news/sas-ceo-says-cep-open-source-and-cloud-bi-have-limited-appeal

and the Pentaho follow-up reaction is here

http://bi.cbronline.com/news/pentaho-fires-back-across-sas-bows-over-limited-open-source-appeal

 

 

While you can rage and screech- here is the reality in terms of market share-

From Merv Adrian-‘s excellent article on market shares in BI

http://www.enterpriseirregulars.com/22444/decoding-bi-market-share-numbers-%E2%80%93-play-sudoku-with-analysts/

The first, labeled BI Platforms, is drawn fromGartner Market Share Analysis: Business Intelligence, Analytics and Performance Management Software, Worldwide, 2009, published May 2010 , and Gartner Dataquest Market Share: Business Intelligence, Analytics and Performance Management Software, Worldwide, 2009.

and

Advanced Analytics category.

and 

so whats the performance of Talend, Pentaho and Jaspersoft

From http://www.dbms2.com/category/products-and-vendors/talend/

It seems that Talend’s revenue was somewhat shy of $10 million in 2008.

and Talend itself says

http://www.talend.com/press/Talend-Announces-Record-2009-and-Continues-Growth-in-the-New-Year.php

Additional 2009 highlights include:

  • Achieved record revenue, more then doubling from 2008. The fourth quarter of 2009 was Talend’s tenth consecutive quarter of growth.
  • Grew customer base by 140% to over 1,000 customers, up from 420 at the end of 2008. Of these new customers, over 50% are Fortune 1000 companies.
  • Total downloads reached seven million, with over 300,000 users of the open source products.
  • Talend doubled its staff, increasing to 200 global employees. Continuing this trend, Talend has already hired 15 people in 2010 to support its rapid growth.

now for Jaspersoft numbers

http://www.dbms2.com/2008/09/14/jaspersoft-numbers/

Highlights include:

  • Revenue run rate in the double-digit millions.
  • 40% sequential growth most recent quarter. (I didn’t ask whether there was any reason to suspect seasonality.)
  • 130% annual revenue growth run rate.
  • “Not quite” profitable.
  • Several hundred commercial subscribers, at an average of $25K annually per, including >100 in Europe.
  • 9,000 paying customers of some kind.
  • 100,000+ total deployments, “very conservatively,” counting OEMs as one deployment each and not double-counting for OEMs’ customers. (Nick said Business Objects quotes 45,000 deployments by the same standards.)
  • 70% of revenue from the mid-market, defined as $100 million – $1 billion revenue. 30% from bigger enterprises. (Hmm. That begs a couple of questions, such as where OEM revenue comes in, and whether <$100 million enterprises were truly a negligible part of revenue.)

and for Pentaho numbers-

http://www.dbms2.com/2009/01/27/introduction-to-pentaho/

and http://www.monash.com/uploads/Pentaho-January-2009.pdf

suggests there are far far away from the top 5-6 vendors in BI

and a special mention  for postgreSQL– which is a non Profit but is seriously denting Oracle/MySQL

http://www.postgresql.org/about/

Limit Value
Maximum Database Size Unlimited
Maximum Table Size 32 TB
Maximum Row Size 1.6 TB
Maximum Field Size 1 GB
Maximum Rows per Table Unlimited
Maximum Columns per Table 250 – 1600 depending on column types
Maximum Indexes per Table Unlimited

and leading vendor is EnterpriseDB which is again IBM-partnering as well as IBM funded

http://www.sramanamitra.com/2009/05/18/enterprise-db/

and

http://www.enterprisedb.com/company/news_events/press_releases/2010_21.do

suggest it is still in early stages.

————————————————————–

So what do we conclude-

1) There is a complete lack of transparency in open source BI market shares as almost all these companies are privately held and do not disclose revenues.

2) What may be a pure play open source company may actually be a company funded by a big BI vendor (like Revolution Analytics is funded among others by Intel-Microsoft) and EnterpriseDB has IBM as an investor.MySQL and Sun of course are bought by Oracle

The degree of control by proprietary vendors on open source vendors is still not disclosed- whether they are holding a stake for strategic reasons or otherwise.

3) None of the Open Source Vendors are even close to a 1 Billion dollar revenue number.

Jim Goodnight is pointing out market reality when he says he has not seen much impact (in terms of market share). As for the rest of his remarks, well he’s got a job to do as CEO and thats talk up his company and trash the competition- which he as been doing for 3 decades and unlikely to change now unless there is severe market share impact. Unless you expect him to notice companies less than 5% of his size in revenue.

http://www.cbronline.com/news/sas-ceo-says-cep-open-source-and-cloud-bi-have-limited-appeal

http://bi.cbronline.com/news/pentaho-fires-back-across-sas-bows-over-limited-open-source-appeal