Vector Space Inc.

Raue talks about PALO

August 3rd, 2006

Following our [post](http://www.vectorspace.com/2006/07/25/palo-olap-review) on the new PALO open source package, Jedox president Kristian Raue agreed to answer a few questions about the company’s plans for the product.

### How is PALO planning to relate to the broader world of spreadsheet OLAP?
By July 2006 more than 10,000 people had downloaded Palo and we have 50 new downloads each day. So I think we have already had a large impact in the spreadsheet OLAP market. With the availability of a 32- and 64-bit version and with the availability of a Linux version for Palo our target market is potentially bigger than the market of other well-known players in the spreadsheet OLAP field. With Palo 1.5 later this year, we will have access rights, element attributes, an Embedded Transaction Engine and also an advanced engine that promises even more speed. And after 1.5 we will have a 2.0 release in 2007, hopefully 1st Quarter 2007.

### What is your corporate outlook? Do you intend to make most of your money on the client software? Are you planning an “enterprise” Excel client or something of the kind?
Jedox makes money by selling Worksheet-Server, which is our OLAP-enabled multi-user Excel-to-Web solution for corporate use. We also earn money by selling support and consultancy work regarding Palo and Worksheet-Server implementations. At this time we don’t plan on making money by selling some advanced or enterprise version of the Palo Excel-Client or Palo Server. With this business model closely bound to Open-Source technologies we managed to grow more than 100% in revenue each year.

### What is your relation to the German spreadsheet OLAP maker MIS-AG?
There a basically two relationships to MIS AG. In 2002 I sold my shares of Intellicube AG, which was the initial developer of OnVision, to MIS AG. And second, Peter Raue, formerly president of MIS AG, was my brother. He unfortunately passed away in 2004.

### Is the codebase of PALO completely new, or does it derive from Alea?
It is completely new, we have never seen or touched the code base of ALEA (or Applix TM1).

### Do you intend to relate in some way to Microsoft beyond Excel? What about Analysis Services?
I loved Excel from the very first day that it appeared back in 1987. Apart from that, there is not much relation to Microsoft. You can connect Palo and MS AS using [Cubeware](http://www.cubeware.de/eng/main/news_presse/news/news.php?aiID=54).

### Can we expect to see some unique features in the product?
Yes. In some ways, Palo is unique already today for example with its Linux version. In September we will have the ETE (Embedded Transaction Engine), which will allow the server to trigger other processes when server events occur. Such processes could include, for example, PHP scripts or user programs. It will be very interesting to see where clever users and developers go with such unprecedented capabilities. With 15 years of intensive experience in the spreadsheet OLAP market we will deliver more unique features in future releases.

### What about the clients you are producing? Are you planning to develop for Open Office too?
For Palo there a APIs available in all directions (C, C++, .NET, PHP and Java at www.jpalo.net). We used the .NET API to build our freeware Excel client. So far, we are not supporting Open Office yet, but that might change in the future or somebody else volunteers to do it.

### How will Jedox respond if a group decides to produce a free web client that competes with your commercial one?
We would love to see such a development, which would expand the visibility of Palo. By the way, we also like Google Spreedsheets and Excel 12 Server. These products help us develop the market for Excel-to-Web solutions.

### How hard is it for a developer to put a web client together using open source tools like PHP?
Easy. Have a look at the demo source code for PHP that you can download with the [Palo SDK](http://www.palo.net/index.php?show=3).

### What about involving a community of developers? Are you intending to involve others outside of the company, or do you intend to do the development in-house?
MOLAP is about speed. So we currently decided to develop the core engine of Palo ourselves to make sure it is fast. For all other aspects of Palo (clients, ETL, Reporting tools, etc) we are very open and supportive to others outside the company. Look at the jpalo project for example, it is developed by [Tensegrity](http://www.tensegrity-software.de/).

### Have you had feedback or reviews so far?
Very positive feedback from our customers so far. In October the first book about Palo will appear. Palo is already used successfully in large companies and organizations, for example check [this](http://www.jedox.com/show.php?link=r0318954).

### What about documentation?
We are continuously improving the documentation and welcome suggestions about missing parts. Also the book - which will probably be in German and probably also in English and French - will help a lot. If you have a problem with missing information, simply use the Palo Forum. This forum closely monitored by our team. If you think you have found a bug, please report it to our bug tracker.

### In our review, we cited an apparent lack of open source infrastructure for PALO, noting that there is no site on Savannah or Sourceforge, or automated bug tracking. Do you have any comments on this?

Both the forum and the public bug tracker are available since the very first day that Palo came out.

alea datawarehouse element attributes license gpl linux olap open source palo spreadsheet spreadsheet olap Spreadsheets transaction engine

Entry Filed under: General, Spreadsheets, open source, spreadsheet olap, Palo