Even though Yellowfin is very straightforward regarding installation, sometimes we don’t want to mess up our main developing computer with extra applications or spin a new VM just to install one piece of software. Here is where Docker comes into play and really shines.
Yellowfin has an “all-in-one” Docker image that makes deploying a test or demo environment a breeze. This Docker image is all batteries included and you won’t need to do anything else apart from publishing a port. It comes with all the necessary configuration pre-defined, demo data pre-loaded as well as multiple reports and dashboards. The only requirement is to request a demo license file and load it in the app through a browser (more info explained later).
Table of Contents
Video demonstration
Step 1: Deploy the container
In your docker machine execute the next command:
[crayon-66dd0b948e999829952907/]In this case, we are publishing Yellowfin in port 9999, but change it for the one that suits your needs. The image is a bit heavy (2.37 GB at the time of this article) so depending on your internet connection it can take a bit.
Step 2: Access to the Yellowfin app
When the download is completed, wait a few minutes until Yellowfin configures everything for you. You can check every now and then if you can access the welcome screen through the browser, accessing the IP/host of your docker machine and the port you specified. IE: http://server:9999
Once you can see the welcome screen you can log in with these credentials:
User: admin@yellowfin.com.au
Password: test
Step 3: Load your trial license
- Press the top left “burger menu” button and go to the section “Administration/Admin Console”
- In the new section shown, click on the right menu item “License Management”
- Expand the “Upload license” section and there you can load the license file provided by yellowfin.
- If everything went okay, you should see now your trial license loaded in the “current license” section.
And that’s it! Your yellowfin instance is up and running and ready to be played around with.
What can I do with this demo environment?
Although this instance of Yellowfin is completely functional and you can connect it to new data sources, and create new reports and dashboards, you can accomplish way more with it.
Yellowfin has a great API that can be used to connect to other third-party solutions like for example, your own apps developed with RAD Studio.
Stephen Ball posted about this topic and developed an amazing project using Delphi that connects to a Yellowfin instance. This project is published on GitHub for free and it’s very easy to connect it with the instance we’ve deployed in this article.
How do I request a trial Yellowfin license file?
You can access this link to get a 30-days trial license file. In case you are a current customer of Yellowfin and want a license for testing purposes, contact support for further information.
If you want more detailed information about the installation and Yellowfin in general you can access their documentation and wiki here.