>> I've got a small start-up business and we desperately need an OLAP
>> service running off a transactional firebird database that's been
>> written by specialists in Singapore.
>>
>> I've got a small amount of development experience from a long time
>> ago, but I'm afraid Firebird's got me beat !
>
> I believe Mondrian and jPivot or jMagallanes work with Firebird via
> JayBird just fine. IIRC, Thomas Steinmaurer recently said on some of the
> mailing lists that he has got it working.

Right and Mondrian 3 with Firebird 2 is a very nice combination. And
with a robust aggregate table concept inside the Firebird database, even
large fact tables are manageable, from a performance POV.

Speed for a fixed set of aggregated analysis query is excellent with
that, because Mondrian is pretty good in re-writing MDX/SQL queries to
take advantage of pre-aggregated data in the aggregate tables.

On a first approach, we had OLTP and OLAP inside one database. Now we
have splitted that into two databases, which now can be administrated
separately (e.g. setting a different page buffers, due to it's different
usage pattern).

For the ETL process, we are using Pentaho Data Integration, formerly
known as Kettle.



--
Best Regards,
Thomas Steinmaurer
LogManager Series - Logging/Auditing Suites supporting
InterBase, Firebird, Advantage Database, MS SQL Server and
NexusDB V2
Upscene Productions
http://www.upscene.com