Is the greatest source of your pain at the data storage end (ETL, RDBMS), aggregations (OLAP cube), or presentation (reports, visualizations)? I ask because ot

Is the greatest source of your pain at the data storage end (ETL, RDBMS), aggregations (OLAP cube), or presentation (reports, visualizations)? I ask because other than issues with the traditional RDBMS+cube approach, mentioned by some in this thread as outdated, one of the issues I find is that open source ETL and BI tools do not have the maturity of open source databases. Having moved from all-Microsoft shops (SQL Server, SSIS, SSRS), to PostgreSQL for data, and a mix of OSS and commercial ETL and presentation tools, my greatest source of frustration is the effort in working with tools that feel "unfinished". Cumbersome processes to accomplish what should be simple tasks can make any project frustrating. This is not to say that the folks working on OSS OLAP / BI tools are not doing good work. But these tools have not been in development as long as something like PostgreSQL, so they simply don't have the maturity. Another issue is that many of those who are consumers of open source OLAP tools are data people, not as adept in languages like Java or C. Thus non-developers can't contribute back to the projects at the same rate that developers can. None of these points solve your issue, but as it stands, I find a mix of mature open source with commercial front ends suitable. I am mixing PostgreSQL with Tableau with some success. Tableau means license costs and Windows, but from an ease of development perspective, I have not found a suitable open source replacement. Saiku is one that has my interest.