IcCube


icCube is a company founded in Switzerland that provides business intelligence software of the same name. The software can be fully embedded, can be hosted in a managed environment or installed locally, on premises.
The BI tool allows end-users to create or edit dashboards themselves and is capable of processing data from multiple sources in real-time. The software distinguishes itself by making the dashboards, the dashboard builder, the schema/cube builder and the server monitoring application accessible from a browser only. No software has to be installed at the device of the end-user.
Next to the browser-based dashboard builder, data can be accessed by running queries directly on the OLAP cube using MDX, SQL or R.

History

icCube sells an online analytical processing server.
Starting in June 2010 with its first public community version. Since then, the company has released new versions multiple times per year.
DateVersionEvent
June 20100.9.2The very first published version of the in-memory OLAP server; MDX/XMLA support are the primary objectives.
November 20101Building on the feedback of the community this is the first features complete version. A community version.
June 20111.3Expanded MDX support and stronger cube modeling features; the first version of the visualization library.
October 20112First version advertised for business use.
April 20122.5First version featuring the Web Reporting server.
January 20133Better performance and more features.
June 20134A second generation calculation engine.
January 20154.8.2Improving the 4.x versions.
May 20155.1Adding extract, transform, load features.
May 20165.2Improving the 5.x versions.
October 20166.0Brand new reporting and new server calculation engine.
July 20176.2Added Google Maps layers for GEO widgets, heat maps, etc
August 20176.5Added dashboard commenting module for collaboration
April 20186.6Improved ETL + Added dashboard discussions/comments can be filtered by current data filters.
March 20196.8.6New JSON Rest API + several improvements to both the server and the reporting.

Architecture

icCube is implemented in Java and follows J2EE standards. For the latter, it embeds both an HTTP server and a servlet container to handle all the communication tasks.
Being an in-memory OLAP server, the icCube server does not need to source its data from a RDBMS; any data source that exposes its data in a tabular form can be used; several plugins exists for accessing files, HTTP stream, etc. Accessing datasource that expose JSON objects is also supported. icCube is then taking care of possibly complex relations implied by the JSON structure.
Accessing icCube is performed through a unique Web interface and a JSON Rest API.
The icCube OLAP server does not use any caching or pre-aggregation mechanism.

Interfaces

icCube uses Multidimensional Expressions as its query language and several extensions to the original language : function declarations, vector, matrix, objects, Java and R interactions.
icCube patented an MDX debugger.
icCube supports a standard interface and a proprietary one.
The XML for Analysis (XMLA protocol can connect to any XMLA compatible reporting tool.
icCube supports its own proprietary protocol called GVI. HTTP based, it can be extended.
This protocol leverages the Google Visualization wire protocol. Javascript is the primary implementation language and a Java mapping library is also available.
Since icCube 6.8.6, the icCube server supports a JSON Rest API for a programmatic access.