Book Image

TIBCO Spotfire: A Comprehensive Primer. - Second Edition

By : Andrew Berridge, Michael Phillips
Book Image

TIBCO Spotfire: A Comprehensive Primer. - Second Edition

By: Andrew Berridge, Michael Phillips

Overview of this book

The need for agile business intelligence (BI) is growing daily, and TIBCO Spotfire® combines self-service features with essential enterprise governance and scaling capabilities to provide best-practice analytics solutions. Spotfire is easy and intuitive to use and is a rewarding environment for all BI users and analytics developers. Starting with data and visualization concepts, this book takes you on a journey through increasingly advanced topics to help you work toward becoming a professional analytics solution provider. Examples of analyzing real-world data are used to illustrate how to work with Spotfire. Once you've covered the AI-driven recommendations engine, you'll move on to understanding Spotfire's rich suite of visualizations and when, why and how you should use each of them. In later chapters, you'll work with location analytics, advanced analytics using TIBCO Enterprise Runtime for R®, how to decide whether to use in-database or in-memory analytics, and how to work with streaming (live) data in Spotfire. You'll also explore key product integrations that significantly enhance Spotfire's capabilities.This book will enable you to exploit the advantages of the Spotfire serve topology and learn how to make practical use of scheduling and routing rules. By the end of this book, you will have learned how to build and use powerful analytics dashboards and applications, perform spatial analytics, and be able to administer your Spotfire environment efficiently

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TIBCO Spotfire: A Comprehensive Primer. - Second Edition
Andrew Berridge | Michael Phillips
Apr, 2019 | 578 pages
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Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Preface
Preface
Who this book is for
What this book covers
To get the most out of this book
Get in touch
Free Chapter
1
Section 1: Introducing Spotfire
Section 1: Introducing Spotfire
2
Welcome to Spotfire
Welcome to Spotfire
Getting started with TIBCO Spotfire
Getting started with loading data
Introduction to the data panel
Saving Spotfire files
Producing a useful interactive dashboard
Summary
3
It's All About the Data
It's All About the Data
Technical requirements
Understanding the basic row/column structure of a data table
Exploring key data types
Building a scatter plot with real-world data
Displaying information quickly in tabular form
Enriching visualizations with color categorization
Visualizing hierarchical data using treemaps
Summary
4
Impactful Dashboards!
Impactful Dashboards!
KPI charts
Enabling end users to configure the KPI chart interactively
Drilling in to the KPI chart
Deep dive – what insights can the dashboard reveal?
Publishing the dashboard to Spotfire Web
Summary
5
Sharing Insights and Collaborating with Others
Sharing Insights and Collaborating with Others
Bookmarks
Annotations
Conversations
Summary
6
Section 2: Spotfire In Depth
Section 2: Spotfire In Depth
7
Practical Applications of Spotfire Visualizations
Practical Applications of Spotfire Visualizations
Bar charts
Combination charts
Cross tables
Scatter plots
Line charts
Pie charts
Box plots
Treemaps
Waterfall charts
Graphical tables
Taking action from KPI charts or graphical tables
Other visualization types
Summary
8
The Big Wide World of Spotfire
The Big Wide World of Spotfire
An overview of the Spotfire platform
Spotfire Web Player scalability
A quick guide to administration manager
Using the library administration interface
Automating tasks using Automation Services
The Spotfire administration console
Summary
9
Source Data is Never Enough
Source Data is Never Enough
Technical requirements
Creating metrics using calculated columns
Categorizing continuous numerical data using binning functions
Slicing and dicing data using hierarchy nodes
Other calculations in Spotfire
Data manipulation – where, why, and how?
Merging (joining) data from multiple sources
Tall tables versus wide tables
Transforming data structure through pivots and unpivots
Other transformations
Summary
10
The World is Your Visualization
The World is Your Visualization
Data relations (between tables)
Mashing up data from different tables in a single visualization
Comparing subsets of data
Showing/hiding items of data
Annotating visualizations with reference lines, fitted curves, and error bars
Visualizing categorical information and trends together in combination charts
Visualizing complex multidimensional data using heat maps
Profiling your data using parallel coordinate plots
Summary
11
What's Your Location?
What's Your Location?
Map chart layers
Getting started with map charts
Coordinate reference systems
Using geocoding to position data on a map
Feature layers
Using a data function to assist with geocoding
Adding Web Map Service data to a map chart
Creating custom maps using Tile Map Service layers
Using the map chart for non-geographic spatial analysis
TIBCO GeoAnalytics
Summary
12
Section 3: Databases, Scripting, and Scaling Spotfire
Section 3: Databases, Scripting, and Scaling Spotfire
13
Information Links and Data Connectors
Information Links and Data Connectors
In-memory versus in-database analytics
Information links
Data connectors
Custom expressions with in-database data
Important points to note with in-database (external) data
Connection credentials for Web Player users and Automation Services jobs
Saving connections to the Spotfire library
Streaming data
Summary
14
Scripting, Advanced Analytics, and Extensions
Scripting, Advanced Analytics, and Extensions
Scripting in Spotfire – the why, how, and what
Automating actions using IronPython
Customizing the Spotfire user interface using JavaScript and HTML in text areas
Spotfire Developer Tools
Script trust
TIBCO Enterprise Runtime for R and open source R
Python in Spotfire
Statistica and Spotfire
Extending Spotfire
The JavaScript API
Spotfire Server APIs
Summary
15
Scaling the Infrastructure; Keeping Data up to Date
Scaling the Infrastructure; Keeping Data up to Date
Context-aware load management with scheduling and routing
Some definitions
Server topology
Scaling the Spotfire Server using clustering
Spotfire Sites
Spotfire Web Player scaling
Triggering an update from an external system
Notes on scheduling and routing
Summary
16
Beyond the Horizon
Beyond the Horizon
Natural language search
Canvas styling and theming
Exporting from Spotfire
JavaScript visualizations
Alerting in Spotfire
TIBCO Data Virtualization
TIBCO Data Science
KNIME and Spotfire
TIBCO StreamBase and Spotfire Data Streams
TIBCO Spotfire Cloud Enterprise
Summary
17
Other Books You May Enjoy
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Bar charts

Bar charts are one of the most useful and versatile visualization types in Spotfire. Let's go over them here:

  • Good for visualizing: Any type of data that is split into categories. Examples of categories include the following:
    • Product category
    • Sales region
    • Car make and model
  • Don't use for: Generally, visualizing continuous data on the x-axis is not recommended (as you will see in the following example), unless you are interested in the general shape or trend of the data.
  • Pros: Really easy to construct, configure, and interpret.
  • Cons: If you have lots and lots of categories, there simply isn't enough space on the categorical axis to show all the labels, so you will need to use techniques such as zoom sliders and hierarchical axis selectors. See Chapter 8, The World is Your Visualization, for more information on constructing hierarchies from axis selectors...
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