Spotfire 101

Version 5.5

26 Dec 2013
Learning Objectives

 Basics – understand Spotfire usage & applicability

 Components – understand Spotfire architecture & key components
 Data Access – understand all available options for getting data into Spotfire
 Visualization – create and modify common visualization
 Configure Interactivity – create details drilldown/Limit data
 Save & Export – saving & exporting your analysis and exporting data

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Session#1 Agenda

 Introduction
 Architecture
 Components
 User Roles
 Loading Data
 Visualization Types & Usage
 Visualization Hands-On
 Bar Charts, Line Charts, Combination Charts

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What is Spotfire
Spotfire is a visual analytics and business intelligence platform from TIBCO software.
The tool aims to bridge gap between the massive data that companies produce today and the
business users who need to interpret this data in a simplified way.

What does it do?

 Provides visualization based data discovery
 Helps to create easy and highly interactive dashboards and analytical application
 Performs Predictive Analytics via TIBCO Spotfire Statistical Services (TSSS)
 Collaborate in Context

Who uses Spotfire?

Financial Services Life Sciences Manufacturing
ENERGY
Government Consumer Goods Telecommunications

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Spotfire – Energy Use Cases
 Production Optimization
 Well Engineering
 Energy Trading
 Sales & Marketing
 Operational Efficiency
 Portfolio/Asset Management
 Health, Safety & Environment

 VIDEO

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Architecture Overview
Thin Client

TIBCO Spotfire Web

Layer

Player Client
Fat Client

TIBCO Spotfire
Layer

Professional

TIBCO Spotfire TIBCO Spotfire Web

Server
Layer

Server Player Server

TIBCO Spotfire Platform

Persistence

Server Database
Layer

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Spotfire Components

 TIBCO Spotfire Server

Makes a set of services available to the analytics clients
 User services: It is responsible for authentication and authorization
 Deployment services: It handles the consistent upgrade of Spotfire clients
 Library services: It manages the repository of analysis files
 Information services: It persists information links to external data sources
 Available for several operating systems, such as Linux, Solaris, and Windows

 TIBCO Spotfire Professional

A client application (fat client) that focuses on the creation of data visualizations
 Use of data filters, drill down, working online and offline
 Exporting visualizations to MS PowerPoint, PDF, and HTML
 Only available for Windows environment

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Spotfire Components Contd…
 TIBCO Spotfire Web Player Server
Offers users the possibility of accessing and interacting with visualizations created in TIBCO
Spotfire Professional
 Enables the usage of an Internet browser as a client where no software has to be installed on
user’s machine
 Can only be accessed in a read-only mode
 Must be deployed in a Microsoft IIS server and hence restricted to Microsoft Windows
environments

 TIBCO Spotfire Web Player Client

Thin clients to the Web Player Server
 Several Internet browsers can be used on various operating systems
 Also available application for iPad

 Server Database
Accessed by the TIBCO Spotfire Server for storage of server information
 Only two vendor databases are supported
 Oracle Database and Microsoft SQL Server

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Spotfire User Roles
 System Administrators - install, configure, validate, manage and monitor products in Spotfire platform
 Data Administrators – establish connections to back-end data systems and expose information to client users
 Developers – automate, integrate and extend Spotfire platform using Software Development Kit (SDK)

 Statistical Programmers – create and integrate statistical scripts and functions into applications

 Analysts – perform ad hoc analysis by loading data, configuring visualizations and applying analyses for their own use.
 Computational analyst – use custom expressions, multivariate analysis, curve fitting and predictive statistical capability.
 Authors – design and implement Spotfire analysis, using Spotfire Professional, for others to consume.
 Consumers – consume Spotfire analyses created by authors.

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Loading Data
Clipboard: Performed through copy and paste operations
Text files: These could be plain text (.txt), comma separated (.csv), or fixed format
MS Excel files: The supported versions are MS Excel 2000 or later, with extensions xslx and xls
SAS files: File extensions for SAS files are sas7bdat and sd2
Database: The following vendor databases are supported:
 Microsoft SQL Server
 Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services
 Oracle
 Teradata
 ADS Composite Information Server
 IBM Netezza
 Oracle MySQL
 PostgreSQL
 SAP® Business Information Warehouse (SAP BW)

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Loading Data Contd...
 Information link: This consists of a database query, specifying tables, columns, and filters, created in the tool
Information Designer (from the Tools menu of Spotfire Professional)

 Custom file type: Spotfire can be configured to open custom file types

Modes in which Spotfire Professional internally handles the loaded data:

 In-Memory data: In this mode, the tool will load all the data into the working memory, allowing for quicker
(and independent) access
 In-Database data: In this mode, Spotfire Professional does not load all the data into the working memory, but
takes advantage of the system that owns this data for processing power (all queries will be run in the source
system)

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Visualization Types Parallel Coordinate Plot

Tree Chart Scatter Plot

Line Chart
Heat Map

MAP Chart
Bar Chart

Spotfire inbuilt
Visualizations
Combination Chart
3-D Scatter Plot

Graphical Table

Box Plot
Pie Chart

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Visualizations Usage
A graphical table is a summarizing visualization. It
can be set up to show columns with dynamic items
such as sparklines, calculated values or conditional
Graphical Table icons. One value is shown for each row as
specified on the Rows axis.

A bar chart is a way of summarizing a set of

categorical data. The bar chart displays data using
Bar Chart a number of bars, each representing a particular
category. The height of each bar is proportional to a
specific aggregation

Line charts are ideal for showing trends over time.

Line Chart

The combination chart is a visualization that

combines the features of the bar chart and the line
Combination chart.
Chart

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Visualizations Usage Contd…
Pie charts are circle graphs divided into sectors,
each pie sector displaying the size of some related
Pie Chart piece of information. Pie charts are used to show
the relative sizes of the parts of a whole.

The Scatter Plot is used to plot data points on a

horizontal and a vertical axis to show how much
Scatter Plot one variable is affected by another.

The 3D Scatter Plot is used to plot data points on

three axes to show the relationship between three
3D Scatter Plot variables.

The Map Chart is used to display data in a

geographical or spatial context. There are three
kinds of map charts: maps with interactive shapes,
Map Chart maps with markers or pies, and image
backgrounds with markers or pies.

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Visualizations Usage Contd…
The Treemap is ideal for displaying large amounts
of hierarchically structured (tree-structured) data.
Tree Map

The Heat Map is well-suited for visualizing large

amounts of multi-dimensional data and can be
Heat Map used to identify clusters of rows with similar values,
as these are displayed as areas of similar color.

The Parallel Coordinate Plot resembles the line

chart, but maps each row in the data table as a
Parallel line.
Coordinate Plot

The Box Plot is a tool to visualize key statistical

measures, such as median, mean and quartiles
Box Plot

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Bar Charts – Deep Dive
Bar charts can be used in two ways:

Data grouped by categorical variable and height A continuous measure is grouped or binned
of bars represents some Aggregate measures for along the range of values and the number of
each data grouping values at each position along the range is
counted

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Bar Charts Hands-On
• Setting axes
• Selecting Aggregation
• Putting labels on top of charts
• Adding categorical variable/Changing Order
• Formatting data
• Hiding legends
• Adding Multiple columns data on same axis
• Vertical – Horizontal bar transformation
• Trellising
• Adding reference lines
• Sorting
• Stacked bars
• Binning
• Details-on-demand
• Marking

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 Thank You

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