This is a set of ideas, the major theme being to enable integration between Spotfire Server (in addition to Analyst) and Statistica Enterprise Server. The follow-up ideas delineate possible key points of this integration.
Currently Spotfire Analyst has limited integration with Statistica Enterprise Server and limitations include the necessity for the user to install and run Spotfire Analyst on the same machine (these days a virtual server) where Statistica Enterprise Server is installed.
This existing setup for integration has one major downside: It cannot be deployed to end users. Firstly because anyone maintaining Statistica Enterprise Server is unlikely to allow end users to log into the server to install and then run Spotfire Analyst every time they need to edit or update a dashboard.
Secondly because Spotfire Analyst is a standalone application and is not deployable through a web browser to end-users like Spotfire Server.
This defeats the main purpose of the integration of Spotfire and Statistica, which is to leverage the beautiful visualization and web-based deployment of Spotfire Server.
The proposed idea is to develop integration between Spotfire Server (in addition to Analyst) and Statistica Enterprise Server. This would allow the integration to be configured by administrators and then be consumed by end users of Spotfire through a web browser interface.
Here are some key points:
- The integration proposed is between Spotfire Server (in addition to Analyst) and Statistica Enterprise Server
- This allows the key strengths of each to be utilized. Statistica for its data entry and storage capabilities and the ability of powerful drag and drop workspaces, audit trails, compliance etc. And Spotfire Server for its ease of deployment, ease of dashboard configuration and dynamic visualizations.
- Statistica Workspaces should be considered a ‘Data Source’. One menu location that makes sense from a user’s perspective could be:
“+ > Connect to > Statistica Enterprise Server Workspace”
- Often workspaces in Statistica Enterprise Server will retrieve data from several data sources, conduct data clean-up and analysis and output a user-friendly table. This table should be the preferred data source for a Spotfire dashboard or visualization because it has already leveraged the powerful features of Statistica to achieve its data table ‘end-state’. There is in effect no other ‘data source’ comparable to a richly configured Statistica Workspace.
- Once the integration between Spotfire Server and Statistica Enterprise Server is configured by the administrator, it should be available to all users.
- The integration should seamlessly be recognized by Spotfire Analyst. Once Spotfire Server and Statistica Enterprise Server are ‘connected’, my local analyst client should recognize this and allow me to browse the list of workspaces on Statistica Enterprise Server and use them as data sources as I create new analyses.
- Once an analysis utilizing the integration is deployed to the Spotfire Server library, it should just work for users, including when configured to refresh / retrieve new data from Statistica (eg. by running the workspace that is the data source and retrieving the new data).
- Statistica workspaces can take many minutes to execute and generate resulting data tables. In this case a cached version of the analysis should be presented, with a notification that the data are in process of being retrieved from the workspaces.
- For workspaces that take many minutes to execute, it should be possible to automate the execution and data caching in Spotfire Server so that the data are updated periodically and end users don’t have to wait to see relatively fresh data (eg. day 0 data)
- Users who do not have Statistica Enterprise Server accounts, should still be able to view analyses configured with a Statistica Enterprise Workspace as a data source with fresh data.
- To deploy analyses to users through Spotfire, only valid Spotfire authentication should be required, even if the data source is a Statistica Workspace.
