Saiku Analytics

Open-source Semantic Layer analytics for cubes — drag-and-drop in the browser, SQL through Mondrian + Calcite, and a typed REST surface so AI agents can query without ever seeing MDX.

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Try it in 30 seconds

docker run -d -p 8080:8080 --name saiku ghcr.io/spiculedata/saiku

Then open http://localhost:8080/ui/ and log in with admin / admin. The
container ships with a self-contained H2 + FoodMart demo cube — drag fields
onto rows, columns, or filters and the SPA writes MDX for you.

A hosted instance is always live at https://demo.saiku.bi (auto-reset
nightly).

What is Saiku

Saiku started in 2010 as an open-source OLAP browser for Mondrian. In 2026
it was rebuilt as a modern Semantic Layer on top of:

• Mondrian 4.8.1.x (Spicule fork) — with a Calcite-based SQL planner
  alongside the legacy SqlQuery builder. Calcite is the default; force
  legacy with -Dmondrian.backend=legacy.
• Apache Arrow wire format for cellsets, so the browser and any
  programmatic consumer share a zero-copy result envelope.
• Jetty 12 EE10 + Jersey 3.1 + Spring 6 + Spring Security 6.5 in a
  single-JAR Picocli launcher.
• SvelteKit 5 + Vite for the SPA (separate repo, served from inside
  the same JAR at /ui/).

AI Query API + MCP

Saiku 4.x exposes a typed REST surface — /rest/saiku/api/ai/* — designed
for LLM agents. Hierarchies, levels, measures and synonyms are discoverable
via /ai/cubes and /ai/schema, and a single POST /ai/query translates
a JSON description of a question into validated MDX, runs it, and returns
typed {value, formatted, unit} cells. Every validation failure carries
a {status, field, available} envelope so an agent can self-correct
without scraping logs.

The container also bundles saiku-mcp, a stdio
Model Context Protocol wrapper so Claude
Desktop / Cursor / Cline can wire to a running Saiku with one line of
config:

{
  "command": "docker",
  "args":    ["exec", "-i", "saiku", "saiku-mcp"]
}

See docs/AI-QUERY-API.md and
docs/schema-annotations.md for the typed
contract and the saiku.semantic.* annotation namespace cubes use to
describe themselves to agents.

Dashboards

Build shareable dashboards of chart / table / KPI / text / image tiles over your
cubes — with cross-tile filters, click- and brush-cross-filtering,
drill-down/through, conditional formatting, combo charts, anomaly/forecast
overlays, auto-refresh, PDF/PNG export and read-only share links. See the
docs/dashboards-user-guide.md for the full
walkthrough, and saiku-ui/src/embed/README.md
to embed a dashboard in your own app via the <saiku-embed> web component.

Observability

Saiku ships opt-in OpenTelemetry instrumentation via the OTel Java
agent — zero code changes, zero overhead when off. Setting
OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT activates auto-instrumentation for Jetty,
Jersey, JDBC (every Mondrian-emitted SQL becomes a child span),
outbound HTTP, JVM metrics, and DBCP2 connection pool metrics. Trace
context is injected into the Saiku log pattern automatically.

docker run -d -p 8080:8080 \
  -e OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT=http://otel-collector:4318 \
  -e OTEL_SERVICE_NAME=saiku-prod \
  ghcr.io/spiculedata/saiku:latest

Without the endpoint env var the agent is never loaded. See
docs/observability.md for the full env-var
reference, sampling guidance, and what's not yet covered (Tier 2
custom spans for ThinQueryService etc.).

Build from source

JDK 21 + Maven 3.9+ required.

# Compile, unit tests, Spotless format check (CI gate):
mvn verify

# Build the runnable fat-JAR:
mvn -pl saiku-launcher -am -Dmaven.test.skip=true package

# Run:
java -jar saiku-launcher/target/saiku-*.jar serve --port 8080 --home ./saiku-home

Whole-API integration tests (boots Jetty + the launcher's WAR in-process
against the seeded FoodMart H2 datasource):

mvn verify -P integration

See CLAUDE.md for the full layout, the dependency catalog
(saiku-bom), and the GitHub Packages auth gotcha for local builds.

Repository layout

saiku-bom/             # central dependency-version catalogue
saiku-core/
  saiku-olap-util/     # olap4j helpers
  saiku-service/       # Semantic Layer service, AI Query, schema gen, async, cache
  saiku-semantic/      # YAML semantic layer
  saiku-web/           # JAX-RS REST resources
saiku-webapp/          # Servlet webapp (Spring XML wiring)
saiku-launcher/        # Picocli CLI + embedded Jetty serving the WAR
saiku-mcp/             # stdio JSON-RPC MCP wrapper
saiku-ui/              # SvelteKit SPA (independent versioning)

The SvelteKit SPA lives in saiku-ui/ and is built independently; the
launcher serves the static dist/ under /ui/.

Getting help

• Bugs and feature requests:
  open an issue.
• Questions, ideas, walkthroughs:
  GitHub Discussions.
• Chat: Saiku Cloud Slack.
• Stack Overflow tag:
  saiku.
• Commercial support, hosted, training: [email protected].

The old groups.google.com/a/saiku.meteorite.bi lists and ##saiku IRC
channel are no longer monitored.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md. Short version:

• feature/<name> branch off development — see the Gitflow note in
  CLAUDE.md.
• Run mvn spotless:apply before committing (a pre-commit hook is
  available via ./scripts/install-hooks.sh).
• Tests live in **/src/test/java/; integration tests in
  saiku-launcher/src/test/java/org/saiku/launcher/it/.
• Open the PR against development, not main. main is the release
  branch — only release/* and hotfix/* PRs go there.

License

Saiku is dual-licensed under Apache 2.0 and EPL 1.0. See
LICENSE. A summary lives at
https://saiku.bi/#license.

History

The original Saiku project was started by Tom Barber and Paul Stoellberger
in 2010 at Meteorite BI and now lives at Spicule.
Contributors are listed on the
GitHub contributors page.

For release notes see Releases.

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