Redash vs. TIBCO Spotfire

Redash is well suited to situations where metrics are tracked on daily, weekly and monthly basis. Alerts can be set to emails which helps stakeholders to monitor performance on a frequent basis. It is less appropriate for cases where only dashboards are needed. Redash comes into picture where individuals can query and check data at the same time.

In the case of survey analysis, I used Spotfire for multi-dimensional analysis. My customer usually received just one-dimensional answers from the analyzer. But I analyzed/showed each question from a multi-dimensional point of view for each question. So customers could understand each question more deeply and quickly for customers' thinking.

Incentivized

• Great Query Editor with Autocomplete feature
• Very easy to setup and quickly connect to variety of data sources
• Quick Dashboards with Simple UI which can be easily shareable

Incentivized

• It has the best coding integration (python, R) of any BI product
• The ability to work with very large datasets (10 mil+) is better than competitors
• Export options are more complete and have better functionality
• The data canvas is the best tool to join and transform data vs. competitors

Incentivized

• You need to have a good command over SQL to use Redash but if there could be some way where people can just pull data and do slice dice.
• It would be nice to have an excel kind of filters when all data is fetched.
• Some things like easy to customise the column names.

Incentivized

• They should introduce Python native visualizations
• Learning Materials for basic and Intermediate level should be made free. This helps to attract and onboard new users.
• Jupyter integration will be a great improvement.
• There should be approach available for parallel development. For Example, Two person should be able to edit and save same dashboard if they are working with different components.

Incentivized

-Easy to distribute information throughout the enterprise using the webplayer. -Ad hoc analysis is possible throughout the enterprise using business author in the webplayer or the thick client. -Low level of support needed by IT team. Access interfaces with LDAP and numerous other authentication methods. -Possible to continually extend the platform with JavaScript, R scripts, HTML, and custom extensions. -Ability to standardize data logic through pre-built queries in the Information Designer. Everyone in the enterprise is using the same logic -Tagging and bookmarking data allows for quick sharing of insights. -Integration with numerous data sources... flat files, data bases, big data, images, etc. -Much improved mapping capability. Also includes the ability to apply data points over any image.

Basic tasks like generating meaningful information from large sets of raw data are very easy. The next step of linking to multiple live data sources and linking those tables and performing on the fly analysis of the imported data is understandably more difficult.

Incentivized

Even though, it's a rather stable and predictable tool that's also fast, it does have some bugs and inconsistencies that shut down the system. Depending on the details, it could happen as often as 2-3 times a week, especially during the development period.

Generally, the Spotfire client runs with very good performance. There are factors that could affect performance, but normally has to do with loading large analysis files from the library if the database is located some distance away and your global network is not optimal. Once you have your data table(s) loaded in the client application, usually the application is quite good performance-wise.

Support has been helpful with issues. Support seems to know their product and its capabilities. It would also seem that they have a good sense of the context of the problem; where we are going with this issue and what we want the end outcome to be.

Incentivized

The instructor was very in depth and provided relevant training to business users on how to create visualizations. They showed us how to alter settings and filter views, and provided resources for future questions. However, the instructor failed to cover data sources, connecting to data, etc. While it was helpful to see how users can use the data to create reports, they failed to properly instruct us on how to get the dataset in to begin with. We are still trying to figure out connections to certain databases (we have multiple different types).

Incentivized

The online training is good, provides a good base of knowledge. The video demonstrations were well-done and easy to follow along. Provided exercises are good as well, but I think there could be more challenging exercises. The training has also gone up in price significantly in the last 3 years (in USD, which hurts us even more in Canada), and I'm not sure it is worth the money it now costs (it is worth how much it cost 3 years ago, but not double that.)

Incentivized

The original architecture I created for our implementation had only a particular set of internal business units in mind. Over the years, Spotfire gained in popularity in our company and was being utilized across many more business units. Soon, its usage went beyond what the original architectural implementation could provide. We've since learned about how the product is used by the different teams and are currently in the middle of rolling out a new architecture. I suggest:

• Have clearly defined service level agreements with all the teams that will use Spotfire. Your business intelligence group might only need availability during normal working hours, but your production support group might need 24/7 availability. If these groups share one Spotfire server, maintenance of that server might be a problem.
• Know the different types of data you will be working with. One group might be working with "public" data while another group might work with sensitive data. Design your Library accordingly and with the proper permissions.
• Know the roles of the users of Spotfire. Will there only be a small set of report writers or does everyone have write access to the Library?
• ALWAYS add a timestamp prompt to your reports. You don't want multiple users opening a report that will try and pull down millions of rows of data to their local workstations. Another option, of course, is to just hard code a time range in the backing database view (i.e. where activity_date >= sysdate - 90, etc.), but I'd rather educate/train the user base if possible.
• This probably goes without saying, but if possible, point to a separate reporting database or a logical standby database. You don't want the company pounding on your primaries and take down your order system.

I was not a part of the decision-making team who decided to go with Redash.

Incentivized

TIBCO Spotfire is significantly ahead of both products from an ETL and data ingestion capability. TIBCO Spotfire also has substantially better visualizations than Power BI, and although the native visualizations aren't as flexible in Tableau, TIBCO Spotfire enables users to create completely custom javascript visaualizations, which neither Tableau or Power BI has. Tableau and Power BI are likely only superior to TIBCO Spotfire with respect to embedded analysis on a website.

In an enterprise architecture, if Spotfire Advanced Data services(Composite Studio),data marts can be managed optimally and scalability in a data perspective is great. As the web player/consumer is directly proportional to RAM, if the enterprise can handle RAM requirement accomodating fail over mechanisms appropraitely, it is definitely scalable,

Incentivized

• Cost effective
• One tool for multiple purpose
• Easy access provision

• We can only use it for the free trial period.
• I have to 'rebuild' the course sample files and accounts on Spotfire every semester.
• It is perfect as an excellent alternative to Tableau in the course.
• We have to use the less powerful Cloud version since the majority of the students have Macs. This means we can't use advanced AI features, for example.

Incentivized