What's New in TIBCO Spotfire® 7.12

Spotfire® 7.12 brings a whole new capability to Export in Spotfire, the ability to prepare professional PDF reports based on the visualizations and pages in the Spotfire DXP file.

TIBCO Spotfire® 7.12

Spotfire® 7.12 brings a whole new capability to Export in Spotfire, the ability to prepare professional PDF reports based on the visualizations and pages in the Spotfire DXP file. The prepared PDF reports can easily be exported by end users, or exported and distributed automatically through TIBCO Spotfire® Automation Services. In addition, Spotfire 7.12 adds important improvements in Visual Analytics such as fixed height/width visuals and text areas, the ability to maxmize a single visual and then restore it to original size, and also continues on the Data Wrangling track of "Edit everything" by introducing the ability to remove individual data sources. View the What's new in Spotfire 7.12 Youtube video on our What's New in Spotfire Youtube Channel

Note that Spotfire® 7.12 is a mainstream version. Fixes to critical issues discovered after the release will only be made to the most current version and to any long term supported versions . For more information on the difference between mainstream versions and long term supported versions see the documentation.

Export prepared reports to PDF

Users can now create and save one or more Prepared reports that contain the settings for how to export a Spotfire DXP file to PDF. It is now possible to select pages or individual visualizations from the Spotfire DXP file and mix them into a PDF report, if needed using repetitions over filter values or bookmarks and exporting all rows from tables or trellised visualizations.

The reports are named and stored inside the DXP and can very easily be exported by users of web or installed clients by selecting the prepared report.

The prepared reports may contain selected pages and individual visualizations from the DXP file.

Note that it is possible to select an individual visualization and export it to its own page in the PDF. This is especially useful for Tables and "Trellis by pages" visualizations where it is possible to select to export all rows/pages, even those not visible on the screen.

Repeat pages or visualizations per filter

In a static report, there is sometimes the need to repeat a page or visualization several times, for each value of a column. For example, if we are looking at sales data for some stores of different types, it may be interesting to first look at total sales per store type for the whole country, then have the same visualization repeated and filtered to contain data for only one sales region at a time.

Repeat pages or visualizations per bookmark

Similarly as with filters, it is sometimes needed to export pages or individual visualizations with the settings of a specific bookmark that sets, for example, a marking or a specific filtering that cannot be expressed as a simple repetition over categorical values.

Header and footer

The header and the footer are very flexible and consist of, in total, 8 different fields. At the top and the bottom of the page there are the left, center and right header/footer field. Below the top header fields there is also a field for additional information, and there is also an additional field above the three footer fields. It easy to configure the font, size, color and background color of the text in each of the fields, which makes it possible to give the report a professional look and feel. All fields are optional and can contain selected content such as free text, page number, date, report name, page title, etc, but they can also contain dynamic information, such as the value of a filter or bookmark used to repeat the current page.

Example report with header and footer

Exporting a prepared report from the menu

When one or more prepared reports are available in a DXP file, it is easy for an end user to do an export. The user just needs to access the Export menu and select PDF, then choose which of the prepared reports to export and then click Export.

Exporting prepared report from a text area button or link

An Author can make it even easier for Consumers to export the prepared report by providing a text area button or link that triggers the export of a specified prepared report through using a new Action available in Text Area Action Controls, that lets the author create a button, link or image and select a corresponding Prepared Report, which will be exported if a user clicks on the control.

Export prepared reports in Automation Services

It is now possible to export a prepared PDF report through TIBCO Spotfire Automation Services. The Export to PDF task in the Automation Services job builder now lets the user select a prepared report from the open DXP file and export it to a defined location.

Export to Power Point and Export to Image

The Export to PowerPoint feature now uses the visual theme when exporting, and also uses a higher resolution making the visualizations and text clearer.

When exporting a visualization to an image, the image will now use the visual theme of the analysis, and the image is exported in a higher resolution than before. There are also right-click context menu option to export an image to a .png file, and also to copy the visualization image to the clipboard so it can be pasted into a document or presentation.

Visual Analytics

Maximize a visualization and then restore to original size

It is now easily possible to temporarily maximize a visualization, and then return to the previous page layout again. This makes it easier to take a closer look at a particular visualization without distorting the original visualization layout on the page. In addition, in the maximized view there are controls that let you rotate the view between all visualizations on the page. To see it in action take a look at this

The visuals can be maximized/restored from the expanding arrows button in the visualizations title-bar, or from the visualizations right-click context menu.

Fixed height or width of text areas and visualizations

Spotfire now lets you fix the width or height of a text area or visualization in certain positions of the page. As an example, you can easily lock the height of a text area located on the top or the bottom of the page, or the width of a text area which is on the left or right edge of the page. The same capability exists for all visualizations, but an important usage of this is to avoid that text areas get scroll bars when viewed on small screens.

In the illustration below the you can see a dashboard on a big screen in the background, and in the foreground the same dashboard on a smaller screen, and that the top and left text areas still retain their height and width, respectively.

In order to lock the height or width, click the lock icon in the toolbar: All splitters between visualizations light up and a lock icon appears wherever you are able to fix the width or height. On the lock icon, a small menu shows you the available options for how to lock the height or width.

The below screenshot shows that the top text area has a locked height from the top of the page, and the user has clicked on the splitter for the left text area and is presented with the option to lock the width of the text area to the left of the page.

Improved scrolling on mobile devices

In Spotfire web clients, it is now possible to use two-finger scroll on mobile devices. This is useful when viewing a page which is larger than the screen of the device and looking at a visualization with its own scroll capability, for instance a table or a map. By using two fingers to scroll you can make the page scroll rather than the visualization. When using one finger, the visualization itself scrolls. For visualizations that do not have internal scroll there is no difference; both types of scrolling will scroll the page. In addition, the scrolling on pages on mobile devices now is generally smoother (known as "Momentum" on iOS).

Increased number of labels on scatter plots and maps

The maximum limit for the number of labels displayed in a scatter plot or a map chart has been increased. You can now use up to 3000 labels in your visualizations (compared to the previous limit of 200). This is mainly useful when having centered labels for data where markers do not overlap significantly.

WMS Layer Authentication

Usually WMS (Web Map Services) are public and do not need authentication, but now it is possible to add map layers to Spotfire also from WMS that do require a username and password.

Data Wrangling

Remove individual data sources

The latest data wrangling and editing capability in Spotfire is the ability to remove individual data sources using the source view.

The new trash can button (as seen below on the POSDetails.csv file data source node) allows you to remove a node in the source view tree.

In the two images below, notice how Spotfire provides you with a preview of the result as you hover with the mouse pointer over the trash can icon on a node. This makes it easy to see what the result will be after the node has been removed. You can of course also use Undo, should you change your mind after removing a node.

In the image below, we have removed the POSDetails.csv data source, which means that SalesTransactions from Teradata now is the only data source providing input to our final data table. Notice how the Add columns operation is removed as well as the data source node.

In the image below, notice that Spotfire provides a warning if you remove the first data source in the source view:

Smart movement of data transformations when removing data sources

You may wonder what happens when you remove a data source which has data transformations applied to it? Spotfire has a smart way of managing this.

Below is an example of a source view with transformations on nodes.

When you hover over a node's trash can icon you will notice that the badge indicating the number of data transformations might be dimmed out during the preview. If the transformations will be removed together with the node, the badge is dimmed. If the transformations will be left after the node is removed, the badge will not be dimmed. Spotfire will automatically move the data transformations to the appropriate nodes, when this is possible.

For example, if the added rows in the image below are removed, the data transformation previously applied on the added rows node will remain.

The result is a single data source with 3 + 1 = 4 data transformations, as seen in the image below.

Another example of when Spotfire's smart movement of data transformations is valuable is when you are removing the first data source and would like to keep only the columns added in the Added columns operation. You can achieve this by adding an Exclude columns data transformation before you remove the first data source. In the example below, the first data source is removed and the exclude columns data transformation is kept on the data source.

The data source information now lists added and ignored columns

When you join data tables in Spotfire using the Insert Columns feature, Spotfire natively stores information about which columns you selected to ignore from the new data table. Spotfire has also listed these ignored columns in the source information details in the source view and in the data table properties dialog.

With this Spotfire release the columns you decided to add are listed together with your ignored columns. This is particularly useful when working on complex data that involves many data transformations and multiple Insert Columns operations.

In the image below, the new Added columns section is shown in the Information pane. Seven columns are added and five columns are ignored.

The image below shows that all columns but one have been ignored. Only the Customer column was added.

Delete multiple data tables at once

This is a small but time saving feature when cleaning up an analysis file from data tables you no longer need. From the Edit > Data Table Properties dialog it is now possible to select multiple data tables and delete them all at once. Simply select multiple data tables by shift-clicking on them in the list of data tables and then click the Delete button.

Data Access

The Teradata connector now supports macros

With Spotfire's connector for Teradata, you can now browse and connect to data represented by Teradata macros. A macro in Teradata allows you to name a set of one or more SQL statements, which then provide a convenient shortcut for executing groups of frequently run SQL statements in Teradata.

The image below shows how Spotfire presents Teradata Macros as stored procedures in the Views in Connection dialog.

The Apache Spark SQL connector now supports temporary views

As a Spark developer you might publish results of Spark jobs in temporary views. With this release of Spotfire, you can connect directly to those views using Spotfire's self-service live query connector and instantly visualize the result.

The image below shows that temporary views are displayed under a separate category in the list of available tables in the Views in Connection dialog.

Apache Spark SQL temporary views and tables in custom queries

If you are creating a custom query and you want to use data from an Apache Spark SQL temporary table or view, you must refer to those objects using their qualified names, specifying both the name and the location of the object. The qualified names required have the following format:

 databaseName.tempViewName

By default, global temporary views are stored in the global_temp database. The database name can vary, and you can see it in the hierarchy of available database tables in Spotfire. To select all columns from a global temporary view named myGlobalTempView, that is stored in the global_temp database:

 SELECT * FROM global_temp.myGlobalTempView

Temporary views/tables (listed in Spotfire under ?Temporary views? or ?Temporary tables?) are always located in the #temp database. To select all columns in a temporary view named myTempView:

 SELECT * FROM #temp.myTempView

Developer

Export to PDF with the Spotfire .Net API

It is now possible to export a prepared PDF report with the Spotfire .Net API, which makes it possible to include exporting of PDF reports in custom workflows with C# extensions or IronPython scripts.

Export to PDF with the Spotfire JavaScript API

It is now possible to export a prepared PDF report with the Spotfire JavaScript API, so that you can take advantage of Spotfire's PDF report capabilities in a web mashup environment.

In addition, there is an option in the JavaScript API to launch a dialog for exporting to PDF without having a prepared report. This option now has the same capabilities as when using the Spotfire clients. The dialog provides a preview, the exported visualizations use the visual theme in the analysis and the exported PDF is of a higher graphical quality.

API to render pages and visualizations to PNG images

The Spotfire .Net API has new capabilities when rendering pages and visualizations. The resulting PNG images use the visual theme and the API includes settings to adjust the resolution as well as the visability of visual attributes such as annotations, axis labels, legend and title.

This API is useful when creating export tools to support customized layouts or output formats.

API to remove data operation

The Data Table Source View API (introduced with the 7.10 release) now lets you remove individual data sources or other operations, such as add columns operations or add rows operations.

API to maximize a visualization

The Spotfire .Net API now supports the ability to temporarily maximize a visualization, and then return to the previous page layout again.

Page.ShowActiveVisualMaximized

API to set WMS layer username and password

The spotfire .Net API now supports configuring a WMS layer with username and password.

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