Saiku

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.

saiku.bi · Live demo · Issues · Discussions

Try it in 30 seconds

docker run -d -p 8080:8080 --name saiku -e SAIKU_DEMO=true ghcr.io/spiculedata/saiku

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

For a real deployment, drop SAIKU_DEMO=true and set an admin password: -e SAIKU_ADMIN_PASSWORD='a-strong-password' (or -e SAIKU_ADMIN_PASSWORD_FILE=/run/secrets/saiku-admin-password). Saiku refuses to start on the default admin/admin once it's network-reachable, so one of those two is required — and the password must itself clear the policy (≥ 12 characters, not a well-known weak password), so SAIKU_ADMIN_PASSWORD=admin is refused too.

Demo fixtures follow demo mode (saiku#1953). A boot without SAIKU_DEMO=true stages no demo content: no FoodMart/Bank/TPC-DS/Flights schemas, no H2 fixtures, no datasource descriptors — a fresh home comes up with an empty datasource list. Set SAIKU_SEED=true to install the fixtures on a non-demo boot, or SAIKU_DEMO=true SAIKU_SEED=false for the demo login against your own cubes. Seeding is seed-if-absent, so an existing saiku-home is never rewritten or emptied.

The container runs as a non-root user (uid/gid 10001:10001). A fresh named/anonymous volume works out of the box. Any pre-existing saiku-home from an older root container — bind mount or named volume — must be re-owned once: sudo chown -R 10001:10001 <host-dir>, or for a named volume docker run --rm -v saiku-home:/app/saiku-home --user 0 --entrypoint chown ghcr.io/spiculedata/saiku:latest -R 10001:10001 /app/saiku-home. The container fails closed with a FATAL: message (naming the fix) rather than silently rotating its encryption key. On Kubernetes set securityContext: { runAsUser: 10001, fsGroup: 10001 }. See the CHANGELOG upgrade note for details.

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. The Calcite planner reaches modern engines too — see examples/lakehouse-demo for a Saiku → Mondrian → Calcite → Trino → Iceberg walkthrough.
• 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