Way back in Chapter 1, Show Me the Data, we covered some standard ways in which Spotfire can access data: delimited text files and Excel spreadsheets, SAS datasets, and basic database connections to mainstream databases such as Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server. In Chapter 5, Source Data is Never Enough, we looked at information links and in-database analytics, but we still confined the discussion to those mainstream data sources.

In the world of Big Data, there are many data sources that don't fit any of the preceding categories and that require specific connectors. Since Spotfire v4.5, TIBCO has been expanding the number of data connectors available. Spotfire now has almost 20 native connectors, including Apache Hadoop/Hive, Cloudera Hive and Impala, HP Vertica, Oracle Essbase, SAP HANA and NetWeaver Business Warehouse, Teradata, IBM DB2 and Netezza, and Cisco ("Composite") Information Server.

To install these connectors, a Spotfire administrator must first deploy...