Learned Spotfire for work, quit my job, now I use it for school.
October 30, 2018
Learned Spotfire for work, quit my job, now I use it for school.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Software Version
TIBCO Cloud Spotfire
Overall Satisfaction with TIBCO Spotfire
Currently I use Spotfire with a student license to visualize my research data for my graduate program. Previously I worked as an engineer at a large company where Spotfire was used to generate reports (some custom some automated) at various stages of a manufacturing for general operations and issue disposition. I gained a lot of familiarity with the tool generating ad hoc reports for personal use to the point that I was eventually writing automated reports that supported others within my group. Besides my department, Spotfire was used across the whole organization; there was a group of engineers that supported all departments by generating and maintaining reporting in Spotfire mostly for manufacturing (they were also responsible for setting up the backend databases for those reports.)
- Dynamic visualizations, I like that it's intuitive to flip between different ways of seeing the data until I can get the story the data is telling.
- Importing data, I like being able to import a csv (or in the past, use custom sql to query a db) then do multiple transformations (pivot, calc cols, etc.) and create the visualizations I need. Especially beneficial that I can add to or replace the initial imported data and as long as I match the format the transformations and visualizations will update.
- As great as it is to view data in Spotfire, the universal reporting standard is powerpoint. Spotfire does a good job allowing me to export the visualizations I have created to a format everyone can view.
- Would like to be able to use network graphs without a separate license.
- The built-in SQL in Spotfire developer is clunky, but there's no good way to debug custom written SQL.
- Zoom on map reports is too discretized, I find I want to zoom to a point that is between two options so I end up with a visualization that is either too far away and has empty space or too close and is missing data. Geographic plotting in new to me and the crappy zoom overall feels out of place with Spotfire's general fluidity.
Spotfire is more dynamic.
- My role was a little disconnected from this. I don't know but I'd imagine it created a lot of visibility to where money was being lost in manufacturing.
- Online training
- In-person training
- Self-taught
Mostly self-taught, found examples online (spotfired), or went and asked other users who knew more than me. There were a few trainings offered which introduced me to some new things which I had to explore myself.
Have not used anything but Spotfire.