6 ms·

Honestly I have never used anything similar to Tableau in the balance of "straight-forwardness" and quality of results. My use case is: here's some data, let's

by gomox 11y ago

Honestly I have never used anything similar to Tableau in the balance of "straight-forwardness" and quality of results. My use case is: here's some data, let's take a look at it and make some decent graphs including any sort of comparative analysis. Excel is... well, Excel. The kitchen sink bundled in it contains pivot tables. Graphs are hideous out of the box, and very limited. Apple Numbers makes cute looking graphs, but is extremely basic. Viz toolkits in JS make you code for stuff that should be straightforward, at different levels of abstraction (Highcharts -> D3). And I have to put stuff in SQL and do the plumbing if I need any meaningful preprocessing. Self-proclaimed "business intelligence" tools don't really target this use case. They solve enterprise problems like connecting to MDX sources that are not there for me. Do you know any other tools for this?

jrumbut 11y ago
I think if you are a smaller operation and you have specific requirements that you've thought out and aren't covered well by basic tools, then getting comfortable with JS and SQL (or R or matplotlib or Jupyter or whatever) is going to be the best way. I've spent too much time watching people spend months and tens of thousands trying to bend 12 different third party tools together when a developer could do the whole thing in a week and it would actually do what you want it to do. Nailing down the actual requirements is the hard part of building your own dashboard, it sounds like you've done that. If your needs are stable-ish or you have consistent developer resources it's going to be hard to find a better fit than that.
- gomox 11y ago
  For me the main point about Tableau is not building dynamic dashboards, but actually working with data interactively in an intuitive fashion. It's for when you want to figure out what the data is telling you, and not how to wrangle the data into saying something.
- rms_returns 11y ago
  This. Freelancing is the future. Hiring in-house developers, or better still, freelance programmers will ensure that you will have custom-built your maximum BI tools and with a reasonable price. Of course, finding and hiring good freelancers who are not only dedicated in their craft, but also reasonably priced is a bit involved task, but certainly doable.
  - intrasight 11y ago
    >custom-built your maximum BI tools and with a reasonable price Have you ever really seen that happen? Not me.
    - rms_returns 11y ago
      > Have you ever really seen that happen? Not me. In 99% cases, that happens because your requirements change. If you hire a competent developer, the total cost of development is always a pittance compared to what you pay monthly/quarterly to a product based company.
    - jrumbut 11y ago
      That's why I was repeating the importance of him having some well thought out requirements. In situations where this is true (and it really happens sometimes), I've regularly seen good developers come in under budget and mediocre ones at least come close.
chebum 11y ago
Klipfolio?
- TheLogothete 11y ago
  Comparing Klipfolio to Tableau is like comparing Notepad to Visual Studio.
greggyb 11y ago
Power BI is Microsoft's answer to Tableau. You can judge on how well it achieves this. There's a free (as in beer) standalone Windows desktop application, and an Azure-hosted collaboration and hosting portal.
rms_returns 11y ago
> And I have to put stuff in SQL and do the plumbing if I need any meaningful preprocessing. Actually, the plumbing isn't as difficult as most people make it out to be. Nowadays, its the era of abstraction and FOSS infrastructure tools like jQuery, Bootstrap and like you mentioned, Highcharts. I'm a freelancer who quite recently developed a Tableau replacement for one of my clients. This client realized that all he basically wanted from tableau was a chart and some basic data manipulation like sorting, filtering and grouping (count, sum, average, etc.). All the things needed to develop this little app already existed in the FOSS world: 1. Highcharts/jqplot for charting. 2. Twitter-Bootstrap for showing a professional front-page and UI elements. 3. jQuery and jQuery-ui for DOM manipulation, AJAX handling for SQL queries, enabling drag/drop, etc. 4. PHP/Mysql on the backend (which is needed in anycase). As for plumbing, each of these tools is so well-documented and also a simple Google search will point to tons of StackOverflow links that happily provide an answer to any and every question you may have! tldr; Library/Framework plumbing might seem complex initially, but for a practiced Web-Developer, its like a cake-walk!
- ativzzz 11y ago
  Hey, question on how licensing for highcharts works as a freelancer. Do you have your client buy a single website license with you as the dev? Or you have a highcharts dev license? Or something else?
  - rms_returns 11y ago
    Nope, we went for jqplot (http://www.jqplot.com/ http://www.jqplot.com/), it is GPL. The client initially wanted to go with Highcharts, but when we found about its licensing, I started looking for a FOSS alternative and this was what I found.
    - nwenzel 11y ago
      rms_returns - are you interested in discussing a project I'd like to have a freelancer work on? You can reach me at http://www.simplelegal.com http://www.simplelegal.com and my HN username.
njx 11y ago
There is Qlik and InfoCaptor
- chris_wot 11y ago
  Qlikview is their main competitor.

by gomox 11y ago

jrumbut 11y ago

I think if you are a smaller operation and you have specific requirements that you've thought out and aren't covered well by basic tools, then getting comfortable with JS and SQL (or R or matplotlib or Jupyter or whatever) is going to be the best way. I've spent too much time watching people spend months and tens of thousands trying to bend 12 different third party tools together when a developer could do the whole thing in a week and it would actually do what you want it to do. Nailing down the actual requirements is the hard part of building your own dashboard, it sounds like you've done that. If your needs are stable-ish or you have consistent developer resources it's going to be hard to find a better fit than that.

gomox 11y ago
For me the main point about Tableau is not building dynamic dashboards, but actually working with data interactively in an intuitive fashion. It's for when you want to figure out what the data is telling you, and not how to wrangle the data into saying something.
rms_returns 11y ago
This. Freelancing is the future. Hiring in-house developers, or better still, freelance programmers will ensure that you will have custom-built your maximum BI tools and with a reasonable price. Of course, finding and hiring good freelancers who are not only dedicated in their craft, but also reasonably priced is a bit involved task, but certainly doable.
- intrasight 11y ago
  >custom-built your maximum BI tools and with a reasonable price Have you ever really seen that happen? Not me.
  - rms_returns 11y ago
    > Have you ever really seen that happen? Not me. In 99% cases, that happens because your requirements change. If you hire a competent developer, the total cost of development is always a pittance compared to what you pay monthly/quarterly to a product based company.
  - jrumbut 11y ago
    That's why I was repeating the importance of him having some well thought out requirements. In situations where this is true (and it really happens sometimes), I've regularly seen good developers come in under budget and mediocre ones at least come close.

chebum 11y ago

Klipfolio?

TheLogothete 11y ago
Comparing Klipfolio to Tableau is like comparing Notepad to Visual Studio.

greggyb 11y ago

Power BI is Microsoft's answer to Tableau. You can judge on how well it achieves this. There's a free (as in beer) standalone Windows desktop application, and an Azure-hosted collaboration and hosting portal.

rms_returns 11y ago

> And I have to put stuff in SQL and do the plumbing if I need any meaningful preprocessing. Actually, the plumbing isn't as difficult as most people make it out to be. Nowadays, its the era of abstraction and FOSS infrastructure tools like jQuery, Bootstrap and like you mentioned, Highcharts. I'm a freelancer who quite recently developed a Tableau replacement for one of my clients. This client realized that all he basically wanted from tableau was a chart and some basic data manipulation like sorting, filtering and grouping (count, sum, average, etc.). All the things needed to develop this little app already existed in the FOSS world: 1. Highcharts/jqplot for charting. 2. Twitter-Bootstrap for showing a professional front-page and UI elements. 3. jQuery and jQuery-ui for DOM manipulation, AJAX handling for SQL queries, enabling drag/drop, etc. 4. PHP/Mysql on the backend (which is needed in anycase). As for plumbing, each of these tools is so well-documented and also a simple Google search will point to tons of StackOverflow links that happily provide an answer to any and every question you may have! tldr; Library/Framework plumbing might seem complex initially, but for a practiced Web-Developer, its like a cake-walk!

ativzzz 11y ago
Hey, question on how licensing for highcharts works as a freelancer. Do you have your client buy a single website license with you as the dev? Or you have a highcharts dev license? Or something else?
- rms_returns 11y ago
  Nope, we went for jqplot (http://www.jqplot.com/ http://www.jqplot.com/), it is GPL. The client initially wanted to go with Highcharts, but when we found about its licensing, I started looking for a FOSS alternative and this was what I found.
  - nwenzel 11y ago
    rms_returns - are you interested in discussing a project I'd like to have a freelancer work on? You can reach me at http://www.simplelegal.com http://www.simplelegal.com and my HN username.

njx 11y ago

There is Qlik and InfoCaptor

chris_wot 11y ago
Qlikview is their main competitor.