Sunburst Chart Mod for Spotfire®

Sunburst charts are used to visualize hierarchical data, depicted by concentric circles. A segment of the inner circle bears a hierarchical relationship to those segments of the outer circle which lie within the angular sweep of the parent segment.

A sunburst chart without any hierarchical data (one level of categories), looks similar to a donut chart. However, a sunburst chart with multiple levels of categories shows how the outer rings relate to the inner rings.

Data requirement

Every mod handles missing, corrupted and/or inconsistent data in different ways. It is advised to always review how the data is visualized.

To make the sunburst chart work properly, the data table must be formatted in a certain way. A data table with at least 3 columns is required:

• One column should identify parents in the hierarchy
• One or more columns should identify children in the hierarchy
• One column should contain measures

Setting up the chart

Let's say we have data about a family:

A basic sunburst chart can be configured to show the parent-children hierarchy sized by the value with the following settings:

• Hierarchy = 'Child' + 'Sub-child'
• Size = 'Value'

Optionally you could also use colors to show another measure or category. E.g:

• Color by = 'Parent'

The end result will look something like this:

Configuring the chart

After setting the data, multiple options are available to alter the sunburst chart appearance live and the interaction mode. To open the appearance options, click the settings button on the top right of the visualization (available in Edit mode).

Show labels for
Show labels for all segments (default), or only marked segments, or no label at all.

Interaction
Click to mark data (default) or to mark and drill-down into the data.

Show segments for empty values
Show or hide (default) segments for empty values.

Sort segments by value
Sort segments by ascending order or in an unsorted fashion (default).

Using the chart

Marking
The sunburst chart allows for multiple ways of marking and visualizing the selected data by having the corresponding value be displayed in the center of the sunburst. Marking data can be done by clicking on a segment. To mark multiple segments or add to the marking set, you must click a segment whilst holding the CTRL key. The sunburst chart also allows for rectangular marking; whilst holding down a mouse click and dragging the cursor across the chart, you can mark one or multiple segments corresponding to the segments that the rectangle overlaps with. To unmark all marked segments, just click the background of the visualization canvas area. To unmark specific segments, just click a marked segment whilst holding the CTRL key.

Hovering
Hovering over segments updates the center value to display the highlighted segments information.

Help and support

This Mod for TIBCO Spotfire® is not supported by TIBCO Support.
In the event of issues or to suggest features and enhancements, submit an issue in the Mod's GitHub repository.
For general questions about Mods, please post in the Spotfire Community Forum with the topic "Spotfire Mods" to make it visible and routed to the appropriate team(s) to respond.

More information about Mods for TIBCO Spotfire®

• Spotfire Community Exchange: A safe and trusted place to discover ready-to-use Mods
• Developer Documentation: Introduction and tutorials for Mods developers
• Mods code examples on GitHub: A public repository for example projects