How to render/provide binary attachments other than images

[Maik Zielinsky]

An Oracle table is read into Spotfire via an information link. One of the columns is of data type BLOB and contains "attachments", i.e. files of different type (pdf, MS Office files etc.). Spotfire seems to read the data, but how can the files be made available in an analysis, eg. for download?

[Dave Leigh]

Hi Maik

It sounds like reading the attachments all at once as part of the data table refresh would possibly take up a lot of memory especially if the user only selects one or two items to read. What I would suggest is having the user mark the rows they want to download, then have a button they press that runs an IronPython script. This script can read from a separate information link passing only the keys to identify the rows to download and retrieving only the binary content which can then be written to the hard drive of the users machine. This would only work in Spotfire Analyst.

Here is an article on using Information Links to retrieve data with prompting (parameter(s)):

https://community.spotfire.com/s/article/How-to-add-Data-Table-based-on-a-Parameterized-Information-Link-in-TIBCO-Spotfire-Using-IronPython-Scripting

Also here is an article on reading column data from a data table:

https://community.spotfire.com/s/article/How-to-read-Column-Values-in-TIBCO-Spotfire-Using-IronPython-Scripting

In this example, all rows are read, but marked rows can be read by getting creating an IndexSet as follows:

selection = document.Data.Markings[mymarking].GetSelection ( mydatatable ).AsIndexSet ();

Hopefully this points you in the right direction.

Cheers

Dave

[Dave Leigh]

Also, I recommend that you create an idea via the ideas portal https://ideas.tibco.com/portal_session/new and include the context for the request so it can be considered by the Product Management team for future development of the product. This will also help them to be able to get in touch for further input.