Spotfire Analytics Flashcards

What type of analytics platform is TIBCO Spotfire?

Answer: A self-service visual analytics and business intelligence platform with in-memory data processing, predictive analytics, and embedding capabilities

TIBCO Spotfire is a BI and analytics platform known for its interactive visual exploration, in-memory computation, guided analytics (TERR/Python scripts), and ability to connect to live data sources including TIBCO TDV.

What is a Spotfire Information Link and what is its purpose?

Answer: A reusable, parameterised query definition that data administrators create against a data source, allowing business users to load data into Spotfire without writing SQL

An Information Link is a pre-defined, governance-controlled query stored in the Spotfire Library that users can parameterise and execute to load data, abstracting the underlying SQL and database connection details from end users.

What is the TIBCO Spotfire TERR engine and how is it used?

Answer: TIBCO Enterprise Runtime for R — an embedded R execution engine within Spotfire that runs R scripts for statistical analysis and predictive modelling directly within dashboards

TERR is Spotfire's embedded R runtime, enabling analysts to write R scripts that execute within the Spotfire environment to perform statistical tests, fit models, and return results as data tables or visualisations in the dashboard.

What is the purpose of Spotfire Mods?

Answer: Custom visualisation types or analytical components developed in JavaScript/TypeScript by partners or developers that can be embedded into Spotfire analyses like native chart types

Spotfire Mods are custom visualisation and analytics components built with the Spotfire Mods API (TypeScript/JavaScript) that integrate seamlessly into Spotfire's data model and property system, extending the built-in chart library.

How does Spotfire's marking feature support interactive data exploration?

Answer: Marking allows users to select data points across multiple linked visualisations simultaneously; all charts that display the same data update to highlight the marked subset, enabling multi-chart cross-filtering

Spotfire's marking is a cross-visualisation selection mechanism: clicking or lashing data points in one chart marks them and all other linked charts immediately highlight the same underlying records.

How does TIBCO Spotfire connect to TIBCO Data Virtualization for live analytics?

Answer: Using a JDBC/ODBC connection to TDV's published data layer, treating TDV as a database and querying virtual views directly without requiring data extraction to Spotfire's in-memory store

Spotfire connects to TDV via standard JDBC/ODBC (TDV exposes itself as a SQL server), allowing Spotfire to query virtual views in real time and display live data without loading a copy into Spotfire's memory.