Installing the Open Source Xavier XML/A client on the Jedox Premium OLAP Suite

Jedox is a software vendor that specializes in OLAP services and solutions. The company has been around quite a while and is probably best known for their PALO MOLAP engine and the matching add-in for Microsoft Excel.

Jedox' flagship product, Jedox Premium comprises the Palo MOLAP engine, API's, a REST server, and ETL server, and client tools. It also comes with a MDX interpreter and a XML for Analysis server. An interesting tidbit is that the MDX layer is not considered native, and Jedox' own clients use a lower level API, or address it via the REST service.

In this blog post I will explain how to install and configure the Open Source browser-based ad-hoc query and analysis tool Xavier to use it with Jedox. A video of the process is embedded below:


Here's a written list of instructions to get up and running with Xavier and Jedox:

1. Download Jedox Premium. Run the downloaded installer to actually install the product. By default, it will be installed in C:\Program Files (x86)\Jedox\Jedox Suite. In the remainder of this post, I will refer to this directory as "the Jedox Suite directory".
2. Download xavier.zip. Unpack the zip. A xavier directory will be extracted.
3. Stop the JedoxSuiteHttpdService. If you don't know about windows services, then look here.
4. Copy the xavier directory that you extracted from xavier.zip into the Jedox Suite\httpd\app\docroot directory.
5. Open the Jedox Suite/httpd/conf/httpd.conf file in a text editor. You should probably make a backup copy of the httpd.conf file before editing it so you can always revert your changes.
6. Add a line to load the HTTP proxy module. To do that, search the httpd.conf file for a bunch of lines that start with LoadModule. Look for a line that reads:
   
   LoadModule proxy_http_module modules/mod_proxy_http.so
   
   In my installation, the line is already present, like this:

   <IfDefine JDX_DEV>
   LoadModule log_config_module modules/mod_log_config.so
   LoadModule proxy_http_module modules/mod_proxy_http.so
   LoadModule setenvif_module modules/mod_setenvif.so
   </IfDefine>
       

   Now, what you'll want to do is to cut this line out of the <IfDefine JDX_DEV> block, and put it outside that block, for example, right before it, like this:

   LoadModule proxy_http_module modules/mod_proxy_http.so
   <IfDefine JDX_DEV>
   LoadModule log_config_module modules/mod_log_config.so
   LoadModule setenvif_module modules/mod_setenvif.so
   </IfDefine>
       

7. Add a proxy configuration so that web applications deployed on the Apache HTTP server can access the Jedox XML/A service as if it lives in the same domain as the web application. To do that, add a Location directive at the end of the httpd.conf file, like this:

   <Location /xavier/Xmla>
     ProxyPass http://localhost:4242/xmla/
     ProxyPassReverse http://localhost:4242/xmla/
     SetEnv proxy-chain-auth
   </Location>
       

   This allows a web application on the Apache HTTP server to access the XML/A service via the URL /xavier/Xmla. By default, the place where the Jedox XML/A service lives is http://localhost:4242/xmla. You can verify this by crosscecking this with the configation in Jedox Suite\odbo\config.ini: the values for the MDXAddress and MDXPort should match the server and port in the URLs configured for ProxyPass and ProxyPassReverse
8. Save the changes to your httpd.conf file, and start the JedoxSuiteHttpdService. If the service starts, you should be good to go. If it doesn't, check the Jedox Suite/log/apache_error.log file and see if you can find some information there that can help you troubleshoot your problem.

If all went well, you should now be able to navigate to http://localhost/xavier/resources/html/index.html and you should see the xavier welcome screen. Note that this assumes the Jedox HTTP server is running on its default port (80). If you chose another port for the HTTP server when installing Jedox, the URL for xavier would have to be amended respectively. For example, I chose port 8181, and hence my URL would be http://localhost/xavier/resources/html/index.html instead.

If you're in doubt what port you chose for your Jedox HTTP server, you can look it up in the Jedox Suite/httpd/conf/httpd.conf file. Look for a line that starts with Define JDX_PORT_HTTP. The port is specified right after that, enclosed in double quotes.