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it_user494067 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Analytics Consultant at a pharma/biotech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Vendor
Build everything from data discovery , to enterprise reports, to simple dashboards, to predictive analytics and beyond

What is most valuable?

  • Data engine: numerous methods to load load, transform, and merge data from every major data source.
  • Web player: out of the box ability to share analysis through web browser. Advanced web functionality to customize with portals.
  • Analytics: basic stats functionality out of the box and ability to connect to all major analytics vendors/languages (SAS, MatLab, R, etc.).
  • Visualizations: equally suited for data discovery and reports.

How has it helped my organization?

  • Tibco Spotfire analysts from building Excel and PowerPoint reports and allows them to start analyzing information.
  • Standardizes metrics and flow of information within organizations.
  • Simple enough for non-tech users to use, but powerful enough for power users to produce advanced analytics.

What needs improvement?

  • Integration with a custom web portal is still challenging.
  • Version control should be included to aide development processes.
  • Further the out-of-the-box ability to customize visualizations.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using it for over five years, starting with v3.

Buyer's Guide
TIBCO Spotfire
January 2025
Learn what your peers think about TIBCO Spotfire. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: January 2025.
837,501 professionals have used our research since 2012.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

Initial deployments are normally issue-free. Spotfire supports numerous data sources, authentication methods, load balancers, and other IT environment configurations. Spotfire v7.5+ is a significant change in architecture and will require a different configuration and additional admin training.

Upgrades normally require minor adjustments to some Spotfire analyses. There are Spotfire tools to assess differences between files in each version and the change in performance.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The most common issue is insufficient resources on host servers or laptops. Most other issues arise from custom applications integrating with new versions of Spotfire.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I’ve worked with deployments and upgrades at small organizations and all the way up to 20,000+ user organizations. Spotfire can be scaledeasily, but requires planning and is dependent on the underlying technology (as with any software).

How are customer service and support?

Customer Service:

Improved dramatically in recent years with rapid releases of updated versions.

Technical Support:

Professional and timely support. The Spotfire upgrade roadmap is a bit opaque though.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Previously I have used Tableau, Business Object, SAS JMP, MiniTab and Excel. Spotfire is most commonly compared against Tableau, Qlik and MicroStrategy. Spotfire is typically selected for its data engine, web player and advanced analytics capabilities.

How was the initial setup?

It's generally straightforward except for when custom applications, e.g. in-house developed software, are to be configured with Spotfire.

What about the implementation team?

Usually large scale implementations are done by a vendor, but small scale deployments are possible with an internal team. Beyond the basic requirements, the key is to understand scalability needs, community use cases, authentication needs, and data architecture needs. Upgrades can be handled in-house.

What was our ROI?

ROI can be measured by how much time is saved by your analysts no longer needing to build reports. Typically, a core group of users build the Spotfire templates and everyone else in the organization analyzes information in the templates. Other than upkeep, once a template is built in Spotfire, your organization can analyze information and take action. Also, the time and sanity saved in no longer sharing PowerPoint slides or Excel spreadsheets throughout the organization can be priceless.

ROI can also be measured by the fact that Spotfire can integrate with existing IT infrastructure and existing IT expertise. Eg. Spotfire can make use of your existing SAS environment to apply SAS models and SAS expertise to data in Spotfire (which is then visualized).

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I recommend training a core group of analysts to build your Spotfire templates. The rest of your organization can use the less expensive Web Player licenses to analyze the data through their web browser.

What other advice do I have?

I also recommend the Spotfire Automation Services component. It allows Spotfire to automate certain tasks like loading data at defined times, sending automated emails, sending alerts, etc.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: I work for the vendor PerkinElmer. PerkinElmer is the exclusive life sciences vendor for Spotfire.
PeerSpot user
it_user496149 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. IT Business Intelligence Scientist at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
It provides connectors and data driver support for about 40 unique data sources, including all of the common structured ones and non-structured ones.

What is most valuable?

  • Ease of accessing, aggregating and visualizing data sources
  • The amount of data that the product can manage in memory

Spotfire provides connectors and data driver support for about 40 unique data sources including all of the common structured ones like Oracle, SQL Server, DB2, etc., plus non-structured sources like HTML, RSS feeds, data warehouses and fast data platforms. All of the different data sources can be merged or mashed up in one “viz”. The size limit of data is the 64-bit address space or 16 terabytes, basically unlimited. I ran one POC on a dataset over 100 GB and Spotfire performed as well as it does with small datasets. Note, the data load time is roughly proportional to the size of the dataset, but the access to the data once it is loaded in memory in Spotfire is just about the same on any size dataset.

How has it helped my organization?

Use of Spotfire has almost eliminated people doing cumbersome, manual ETL efforts in files and other products from transactional source systems and the corporate data warehouse.

What needs improvement?

Administration functionality can be improved more by moving the rest of the command-line effort to a web-based UI. Otherwise, just keep adding more functions that otherwise most customers have to create as custom functions. Add a Shut Down and Exit option in the event of an unresponsive session, usually due to data connectivity issues.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using it for eight years(starting with version 4.0).

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

There is very little instability until the memory of the host reaches 0% availability.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

No issues with scalability.

How are customer service and technical support?

Almost perfect support, 9. The only issue I had was understanding some of the techs verbally due to “English not their primary language”. WebEx and chatting was the workaround.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I did not have any experience with a similar solution before Spotfire.

How was the initial setup?

Initial setup is very simple and works as documented.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Negotiate, plan for three years out and triple whatever your best forecast is for growth. Spotfire usage typically will grow like a wildfire in high winds and dry forest.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I did not do the evaluations but a comparison of Tableau was evaluated and failed to meet data size requirements and in-memory capacity.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
TIBCO Spotfire
January 2025
Learn what your peers think about TIBCO Spotfire. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: January 2025.
837,501 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Muzaffer Yöntem - PeerSpot reviewer
Business Enabler at Infolitik İş Çözümleri
Real User
Top 5Leaderboard
Offers the flexibility to connect to various data sources and create interactive dashboards
Pros and Cons
  • "I appreciate Spotfire's range of visualization options, advanced analytics features, and seamless integration with other TIBCO products."
  • "One aspect where Spotfire could improve is its global recognition, especially in terms of support."

What is most valuable?

I appreciate Spotfire's range of visualization options, advanced analytics features, and seamless integration with other TIBCO products. The flexibility to connect to various data sources and create interactive dashboards has been crucial in gaining valuable insights. What makes Spotfire particularly appealing is its position within the broader TIBCO product family, where it complemented other tools like Live Datamart, providing a comprehensive end-to-end solution.

What needs improvement?

One aspect where Spotfire could improve is its global recognition, especially in terms of support. I think Spotfire is a robust product with certain advantages over competitors, but it might benefit from increased awareness and support. The acquisition by Cisco may have influenced its market presence, but I believe a more focused marketing strategy could enhance its visibility in the business intelligence and analytics landscape.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been working with TIBCO Spotfire since 2016.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Spotfire has been fairly stable and I would rate the stability as an eight out of ten.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Spotfire is highly scalable, and that is one of its significant advantages. It is not just scalable; it is also straightforward to enhance its scalability. When I began working with Spotfire in Turkey, there were only a couple of international users. I worked on four projects, with two focusing on integration for small-sized customers due to the company's scale. I would rate its scalability as a nine out of ten.

How are customer service and support?

Tech support for Spotfire was generally helpful, and there were different levels such as gold and silver support from a maintenance perspective. It worked well even in cases where issues were more about application implementation than the platform itself. Occasionally, there were instances of the support team pointing to it being a customer-specific problem, but overall, the technical support was beneficial in resolving issues. I would rate the support as an eight out of ten.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Before TIBCO, I worked with various vendors and products, including ClickView, BusinessObjects, and Crystal Reports. I specifically opted for TIBCO because their platform addressed analytical BI needs comprehensively, especially in areas like forecasting and big data. Other products like ClickView and BusinessObjects lacked solutions for these aspects.

How was the initial setup?

I used to handle maintenance for the Spotfire solution, both individually and with a technical team from the company. When developing, implementing, and conducting quality checks, the product consistently showed no issues.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

For new customers, the initial list price might seem high, especially considering the product is priced in dollars or euros. Microsoft's bundled products like SharePoint have made them more competitive in Turkey. Despite Spotfire appearing expensive initially, with patience and negotiation, both customers and partners can find a more reasonable and workable solution over time.

What other advice do I have?

Overall, I would rate TIBCO Spotfire as a nine out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:
PeerSpot user
reviewer1441695 - PeerSpot reviewer
Integrating Manager at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
If you have to deploy visualizations you can do it based on the business needs
Pros and Cons
  • "The two features that I have found most valuable are its ability to customize the dashboards when it comes to the evaluation. The second feature is its ability to handle a large amount of data, which is also something very unique about it."
  • "When it comes to data manipulation, there are features which are good, but one of the features which has really been missing in Spotfire is an offline ability for data manipulation."

What is our primary use case?

We have two primary use cases. One is for the data exploration and the second is for deploying the dashboards for the specific business use cases.

What is most valuable?

There are two features that I have found most valuable. One is its ability to customize the dashboards when it comes to the evaluation. If you have to deploy visualizations you can actually do it based on the business needs and even customize them for the business prep centers. Other tools are not as flexible as Spotfire's ability to integrate HTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc.

The second feature is its ability to handle a large amount of data, which is also something very unique about it.

What needs improvement?

In terms of what could be improved, when it comes to data manipulation there are features which are good, but one of the features which has really been missing in Spotfire is an offline ability for data manipulation. In Qlik you are able to simply manipulate the member's data, manage it, and build data through SQL queries. This means you can actually do your data modeling offline. If we had this type of capability in Spotfire that would make it a very superior product with respect to the others in the market. Now it is hard to manage offline.

You really have to rely on the external sources to do the entire data modeling for the exploration or for the visualization development. But what Qlik has also started offering is that they have a wider capability where you can actually have offline data and do your data modeling through the SQL. This means you can actually manipulate a member's data before you utilize it in a visualization. So you really don't have to rely a lot on the enterprise source, and you can manage data in your own source and then deploy the dashboard supporting this.

Additionally, support could be improved. Lastly, the third feature which I would really recommend improving is the diagnosing and monitoring tools, which are really missing in the overall portfolio of Spotfire.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using TIBCO Spotfire for five, six years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is pretty stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

TIBCO Spotfire is a scalable product. 

We have more than 3,000 people using it.

We do plan to use it more in the future. We really recommend the new capabilities and really try to simplify it as we go.

How are customer service and technical support?

We have access to the technical support, though from a technical support perspective, I do feel this is one of the areas which can be improved. There is not a lot of self-service available in the technical admin support. That means that for almost every single issue you may have to rely on the technical support because the online materials are not enough.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Before using TIBCO Spotfire we were using Power BI. However, we were really not able to find a good scalable solution with Power BI.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was easy. It took roughly a couple of days.

What about the implementation team?

There was a team for the initial setup. A couple of engineers.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

TIBCO Spotfire is an expensive product.

What other advice do I have?

I would totally recommend this product. 

On a scale of one to ten I would rate TIBCO Spotfire an eight.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
Business Analyst/Project Manager at a energy/utilities company with 501-1,000 employees
Real User
Great product for admins and for end users. Vendor listens to customer input.

Valuable Features

From an administrator’s standpoint, the most useful component is the Information Designer, which allows one to design links to SQL/Oracle/etc. datasets that query the source system when opened or refreshed. This provides the user base a self-service approach and ensures the query design is not something that jeopardizes the source system or warehouse.

From an end-user standpoint, the most useful features to me were data manipulation capabilities. Spotfire allows users to easily join multiple datasets (from Info Links, spreadsheets, etc.) and create calculations and visualizations against them. With a bit of experience, end users will find Spotfire wonderful for ad-hoc analysis. The other great capability is the extension with R allowing users with R code snippets more visual capabilities (comes with the Advanced Analytics module, I believe).

Improvements to My Organization

In my previous organization, Spotfire added a great deal of value by allowing Reservoir and Production Engineering teams self-service access to production and well data. Spotfire allowed our teams to query datasets for their analysis through the pre-defined lens that we had created in Spotfire. In addition, it allowed them to manipulate the data without introducing any risk to the source systems.

Room for Improvement

The administrative component of Spotfire could use some attention. The Information Designer tool is wonderful, but a level beyond that with hotfixes, updates, and security administration, things get complicated quickly. I have heard that other BI tools in the space are easier to administer.

There are basically two types of Spotfire administration, admin(s) who setup access to data and control the Spotfire library/ies, and admin(s) who manage the Spotfire server and component implementation. Usually, these are not the same person. The administration that involves setting up Data Sources, Data Elements, Filters, and Information Links comes very easily utilizing the Information Designer tool in Spotfire. The administration that is a pain is server administration, mainly because transferring Spotfire files/projects from one environment to another (test to prod during an upgrade) involves exporting the Spotfire library to file storage and then importing it into another Spotfire library. This was the approved method during my day. However, we ended up just doing database copy and refreshes to avoid that entire process.

It is unusual for IT to administer a software suite without the normal dev/test/prod processes. However, with Spotfire and some other BI tools, mass amount of end users create content only in the production environment. In many situations, a Spotfire admin would necessarily make library changes directly in the production environment because it is required to support their users. For Spotfire, it is important early on to define change control processes and procedures, to ensure quality control without limiting end user functionality (which is why you bought Spotfire to being with). Any changes to server or database configuration should go through normal test/prod processes but changes to the Spotfire library sometimes should not (because you are supporting a living and breathing thing with users creating and utilizing content).

Room for improvement would be more guidance up front on these real-world administration scenarios. I don't remember any guidance in these areas and ended up learning much of this the hard way. It is information that folks in the community share, but never gets formalized.

This only applies to enterprise implementations using Spotfire server, not stand alone installations not connecting to a Spotfire library.

Use of Solution

I have been using the solution for five years, including previous versions (5.0, 5.5, 6.0, 6.5). I haven’t used 7.5.

Stability Issues

We encountered a number of issues with certain Spotfire projects (.dxp files) after completing upgrades. These files were extremely complicated with R snippets running, and numerous datasets, transformations, and calculations being performed by the file. Spotfire allows users to create files that should not be created. In these cases, stability of a file is an issue. Stability and scalability of the solution itself is solid.

Customer Service and Technical Support

Customer Service:

Customer service is excellent, quick to respond and knowledgeable.

Technical Support:

Professional Services on the other hand is more questionable. I have had wonderful service from some technical staff, but I have also worked with some I would not wish on my worst enemy. It will be important for customers to find PSG resources they trust or to find another experience through a TIBCO partner, etc. I can suggest a number of these to anyone with interest.

Initial Setup

The initial setup is quite easy, made easier if you’re blessed with a good DW. Only when you start adding administrative features and distributed user bases with different security requirements does the solution become a pain to administer.

Implementation Team

Initial implementation was done before my time. I performed two major upgrades, one with the vendor on-site for two weeks, one alone. I had no issues with the one performed alone. That being said, new departments offering Spotfire as a solution will need support for their first couple hotfixes and upgrades. Refer to what I wrote regarding Professional Services.

Pricing, Setup Cost and Licensing

My previous employer purchased an enterprise license that accommodated our sharp spike in users (tripled user base in two years). Licensing the thick client versus the web developer or web consumer is critical for technical users. This is dependent upon the company and personnel using the tool. Technical users such as engineers or planners will most likely require the professional client. Light-touch users in organizations who’d rather receive a PDF than perform calculations and pivots will have web-client needs only. Picture MS Excel: If your users are Excel users, they will be thick-client/professional/expensive version users.

Other Solutions Considered

I’ve used other solutions in the space including Tableau and SAP BusinessObjects; even Excel and Access can roughly be considered a competitor of Spotfire. I prefer Spotifre to Tableau and BOBJ due to its flexibility and technical capability. Both Tableau and BOBJ seem more structured and stiff. Although beautiful, they sacrifice abilities for tech-savvy end users in return for a friendly-for-all, drag-and-drop, easy-to-print, set-it-and-forget-it-feel. In a bi-modal environment (one tool for key non-changing reports, a different tool for ad-hoc analysis), Spotfire wins the ad-hoc battle versus common competitors.

Other Advice

Spend time scoping the security/folder setup as well as the “Information Links” (queries Spotfire allows users to run). Changing either of these components after users construct their beautiful files against them is a very unpopular thing to do. Predict the dependencies you’re going to create and be strategic in your design.

Spotfire became everyone’s favorite tool if they could learn how to use it.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
reviewer2162244 - PeerSpot reviewer
ICB Expert Project Manager-Data Analysis at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 20
Good support, and is stable, but the UI has room for improvement
Pros and Cons
  • "Live Query data on demand, R and Python integration, and the ability to write HTML and JavaScript text areas are all valuable features."
  • "The data compression has room for improvement."

What is our primary use case?

We use the solution to handle large datasets.

What is most valuable?

Live Query data on demand, R and Python integration, and the ability to write HTML and JavaScript text areas are all valuable features.

What needs improvement?

The data compression has room for improvement.

The usage of SPDF files can be improved.

I would like the ability to loop intellect queries the same way that I can with QVD data.

The UI has room for improvement.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using the solution for nine years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is stable.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support is responsive.

What other advice do I have?

I give the solution a seven out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
BusDevExec338 - PeerSpot reviewer
Business Development Executive at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
Reseller
Connects to many data sources, enables us to quickly see insights in the data
Pros and Cons
  • "The ability to connect to many different data sources is one of the key features. The other would then be the different ways in which that data can be visualized."
  • "I would like more easy-to-implement analytical algorithms. At the moment they include things like forecasts and regressions. They need to add a lot more of these types of things to the product because not everyone is a data scientist."

What is our primary use case?

Very generally it's used for meshing together many data sources and doing data visualization.

How has it helped my organization?

Using Spotfire, it's very quick to see insights in your data.

What is most valuable?

The ability to connect to many different data sources is one of the key features. The other would then be the different ways in which that data can be visualized.

What needs improvement?

The key thing for me is to see that the product continues to add more types of visualizations. On top of that, I would like more easy-to-implement analytical algorithms. At the moment they include things like forecasts and regressions. They need to add a lot more of these types of things to the product because not everyone is a data scientist.

For how long have I used the solution?

Three to five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's extremely stable. There may be some criticism, as a client, about it not being made available on a Mac, as opposed to just Windows. But on the Windows platform, it is fairly stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Some of the biggest customers have 40,000 users, so it is extremely scalable.

How is customer service and technical support?

Technical support is exceptional. I think it has extremely good coverage with multiple levels, Bronze, Silver, and Gold, ranging from standard support through to 24/7 mission-critical.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

As a reseller, the typical vendors would always be Tableau, QlikView, Spotfire, and maybe in that mix would be Microsoft Power BI.

What other advice do I have?

When looking into a product like this, you really need to think not just about what your requirements are today, but to think about it from a requirements point of view for 18 months or two years down the track.

Also, think about whether or not you just want to do BI dashboards or real analytics. If it's the latter, then Spotfire's the tool for you. If not, if your company isn't ready for analytics, then you're probably better off getting a cheaper visualization tool.

When selecting a vendor the most important criteria are 

  • credibility
  • time in the marketplace
  • service support
  • geographical footprint.

I would rate Spotfire at eight out of 10. I still think there is work to done on the visualization side of things. And there is also work to be done on the statistical algorithms.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Reseller.
PeerSpot user
it_user3768 - PeerSpot reviewer
Consultant at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Vendor
Great alternative to Excel and Pivot Tables, but lacks ability to fine-tune appearance options

What is Spotfire'

Spotfire is a BI (business intelligence) tool that enables you to explore and represent “big data” sets. It’s one of a class of tools that focus on making it easy to explore masses of data without being a database ninja. It’s head-to-head with tools like Tableau and Qlikview. I’d previously been put off trying Spotfire partly because Tibco had a head-spinning number of industry-specific variants and I had no idea where to start. Thankfully they have simplified their product range to one product, with variants of funtionality based on how much you are prepared to pay. This is a review based on my personal experiences over the last few weeks of using Spotfire, so I’m not going to comprehensively review all the feature set, just those that I have used and found noteworthy. So is Spotfire the solution to your data analysis hassles'

User interface – what’s it like to drive'

Spotfire’s interface is a teeny bit introverted. It has a clean simple interface that really doesn’t let you know what delights lie within. Unlike a package like Tableau, which has plenty of “user interface bling”, much of the functionality is tucked away in property dialogs that you need to call up with a right mouse click. So you are presented with pretty plain interface. There’s a big button in the blank workspace that will take you to Spotfires introductory tutorial (well worth checking out, but pretty brief).


The first thing you see when Spotfire opens

Getting data into Spotfire

The first thing to do is to open the data you intend to analyse. For Excel data this is a doddle, just go to the little folder icon and open your spreadsheet.


You click the folder icon to connect to your data

You will be asked which tabs you want to import and which columns. Intuitive and simple…


Choosing which data you want to import from an Excel workbook

Opening data from a database is a little more convoluted (by necessity) requiring details of the database and of the SQL query you would like to run.

Analysing data

It can take a while to import the data into Spotfire (a couple of minutes for my query to a 15GB SQL database) but this may be more a function of my database server than Spotfire. It took about 35 seconds to open a 80MB, 800,000 (30 columns) row spreadsheet.

Once the data is imported you are ready to start analysing the data. Filters give you lots of flexibility about which data you include or exclude. You just select your chart (or table) type from the icons at the top and drag and drop your data into the chart. If you have used pivot tables it’s a similar routine. This is the bit that makes you go “wow”. The charts refresh almost instantly. You then fine-tune your analysis by telling it what type of aggregation you want (for example count, sum, median etc.) You do this by clicking the little arrow on the axis label.


With a few clicks the charts start to make sense

You can nest the axis, so have “months” with”day of month” nested within it. Because of the way Spotfire handles dates there is pretty much complete flexibility with how you structure time axes (it splits dates out in numerous ways, allowing you to mix-and-match those elements).

You can do just the same process with tables as well, or mix and match charts and tables with a “Graphical Table” that allows you to drop Sparklines or Bullet charts in cells next to the data – very nice.

Laying out charts and tables – working your dashboard magic

Once you have created your first chart, chances are you will create another. You have two options, either drop another on the same sheet – building a dashboard, or you create another “tab” with your new analysis on. If you put more than one chart on a tabbed page you can use the buttons on the toolbar to arrange them or just manually drag the border to resize the windows. You can add text or data windows onto the same page.


A simple Spotfire dashboard whipped up in a few mouse clicks

Filters – your new best friend – if you can work them out

Filters are really important in Spotfire. They enable you to choose which data you are going to show from a given column, allowing you to exclude certain data (just like filters in Excel, but a bit more elegant). Maybe I’m a bit stupid, but I was surprised that changing the filter on one page affected every other tab in the workbook. After a little Googling I discovered that filters don’t apply to just the page you set them on. You need to create a new filter and then apply it. This isn’t very intuitive as the “Show filtering scheme” option is turned off by default, you need to go into “Document properties” then select the “Filtering Scheme” tab to turn it on – not very obvious at all. Once you have worked this out, filters and simple and easy to use.


The pesky (and important) “Show filter scheme menu in Filters Panel” option

Calculated Columns – super handy feature for all your calculation needs

There’s almost certainly a lot more  functionality buried in Spotfire, but one feature I found myself using was “calculated columns”. Let’s say you have columns called “weight” and “height” and you wanted to have “Body mass index” (kg/(height squared)) you would go Insert>Calculated Column. You are presented with a page that enables you to build an expression based on available columns, available column properties and a list of possible functions.


The expression builder for adding a calculated column

When you are done building your expression you give your column a name before clicking “OK”. It’s simple enough that I didn’t need to look at the documentation once – perfect.

Visualisation of data – charts, graphs and other bling

I have simple tastes when it comes to representing data, rarely branching out past column, line and scatter plots. Spotfire has a good selection of ways of plotting data, including heatmaps, maps, treemaps and all the usual suspects. Here are a selection of examples….


A simple Spotfire heatmap


A Spotfire scatterplot

When appropriate, there are lost of options to vary marker size, colour and even shape based on data. It’s best not to get carried away with this but it can allow you to squeeze some vital extra data onto your visualizations.


A Spotfire treemap

Likes

With the exception of intially loading the data set, Spotfire pounded through the analysis I threw at it. One of the data sets was a 15GB SQL database, another was a 800k line Excel workbook. It returned the analysis almost instantly in both cases. Jaws dropped as my colleages (used to Excel) saw the speed and ease of cutting data. As one of my team said “That tool would completely have replaced my job at the last bank I worked at!”

There seems to be good forum support, most queries you have can be resolved with a couple of minutes Google research.

There are some real time-savers, like the ability to import and export corporate colour schemes. You can also drag and drop data, with clever – icon based – targets that let you determine how the dragged data is used, like this….


The clever icon tool bar makes dragging and dropping data into charts easy

It handles things like dates brilliantly, breaking them down into any combination of day, week, month, quarter, day of week. It’s a breath of fresh air and makes periodic analysis really simple.

It is wonderfully fast, at least on the data set I used.

Confused by

  • Things such as changing the order of data series can be a bit non-intuitive.
  • Filters can take a little figuring out, but are very straightforward once you understand how to set them up and switch between them.
  • Changing the colour scheme is also not very intuitive, but a huge time saver in a corporate environment once you have figured it out.
  • Refreshing data when a spreadsheet changes.

Dislikes

PowerPoint slide export has the potential for greatness but is let down by it’s execution. The exported slides are a bit of a mess, with both images and text a bit too large and badly laid out. You will end up having to hand tweak each slide. I guess Tibco expect users to serve up their dashboards over the corporate intranet but in reality most of my clients still function of the PowerPoint-Email distribution system. I didn’t have the opportunity to test it’s ability to serve up analysis as web pages, but I think it’s quite a big part of Spotfire’s feature set.

The other irritating aspect of the package is the way that axes are labelled. They are logically labelled based on the data source (e.g. Record Count) and the aggregation type (e.g Unique Count). This is all handled automatically and is fine most of the time, as long as you don’t mind axes with labels like “Unique Count(Record Count)”.  If you want to “fine tune” the labels for the “sensitive senior exec types” of customer you will find yourself fiddling about in PowerPoint trying to overlay a text box with the revised label over the top of the image from Spotfire. Not great when you are in a hurry.

Some of the spreadsheets I tried to connect to managed to choke Spotfire (and not through their size, the problematic ones were tiny) – necessitating a trip to Task Manager to kill the program. After a quick copy>paste special>paste values and format into a new sheet and everything seemed to work OK. Workeable but very tedious when there are lots of revisions going on. It may not be a Spotfire issue, but Excel had no issues opening and editing these workbooks.

Verdict

Using Spotfire you get the feeling that someone finally got fed up with messing around with Excel and Pivot tables and decided to implement that approach, but properly.

The whole tool feels nicely focussed around cutting, analysing and displaying data. It doesn’t try to spread itself too thinly and really succeeds at what it sets out to do. One example of this focus would be on scatter plots. I needed to plot a number of points that were nearly co-incident. Spotfire has a dedicated “jitter” control that will jiggle the points about (with the ability to vary the “jitter” amplitude), so you can sacrifice precision for readiblity – brilliant!

Where I found myself getting a bit frustrated was in trying to fine-tune some of the appearance options. For example, on my scatter plot you can label the points, but the only thing you can change on the labels is the font size. You are stuck with a crude enclosing box, no choice on background or on the colour or weight of lead-line to the point.

Part of the reason these minor formatting issues grate is that the rest of the workflow with Spotfire is a delight. Once you have got into the way the package works (a couple of days of light use and you should be there) it is a joy to use. It is fast, logical and flexible. If you find yourself regularly using pivot tables, producing lots of charts or creating dashboards in Excel you really owe it to you (or your team) to check this tool out, it could transform the way you produce analysis.

Trying Spotfire out – getting a free trial

You can try Spotfire out by visiting their site here. You get 2 weeks of the full product and after this it drops back to the “personal edition” which drops a number of the more useful chart types, the abilty to export to PowerPoint and connections to databases (limits you to Excel spreadsheets).

Disclosure

I didn’t get paid a bean to write this article – just so you know.

Version tested 4.5.0.33

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user5052 - PeerSpot reviewer
it_user5052Director of IT at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Vendor

Great review. We are just starting to deploy spotfire in our company for advanced visualization and analysis capabilities. It has been well received. The challenge has been query performance with larger data sets. One of our use cases is pulling twelve years worth of warranty data for failure rate analysis. been a struggle tuning performance. we are starting to use of the in-memory caching capabilities. that is helping.. Need to see more improvements in delivering/distributing/collaborating with the analysis and also with the mobile capabilities

Buyer's Guide
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Updated: January 2025
Buyer's Guide
Download our free TIBCO Spotfire Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.