6 ms·

Show HN: Cluvio – A new cloud analytics platform based on SQL and R

61 points by Maarius 10y ago

Maarius 10y ago
Hey, I'm Marius, one of the founders of Cluvio. Cluvio allows you to run SQL queries against your database, visualize the results as beautiful dashboards and share these dashboards within your company. We have integrated an R engine in the pipeline, so you can run custom R script on the sql results to get combined power of SQL and R. After working on Cluvio for 18 months, we launch today and would love to hear your feedback. Please use 'hacker-news-discount' when signing up to get a 30% discount for the first three months.
- alex95 10y ago
  Hi Marius, In regards to the pricing, I feel that something like this is quite highly marked up. Your pricing strategy puts me off a lot considering that what you're offering is essentially an SQL dashboard. Can you shed some light on how you've came to this price? I know enterprise users are going to be like "300 a month is nothing" but enterprise users are more than likely going to be using proprietary software rather than looking for a software like this. You're also limiting yourself to SQL here, so that already diminishes your target market and continues to ask questions about your pricing. Not so much an argument starter or me trying to be an idiot, but just questions/advice.
- cy4n0gen 10y ago
  Product looks pretty cool. I'm curious as to what the limitations of the R integration are though. Do you allow for different packages to be installed or is that something your team manages?
  - ianformanek 10y ago
    Hi there, Ian here, the other founder of Cluvio. There are some limitations to the R execution environment, as you correctly expect, as a result of running custom code in the hosted environment. Our use case for R is to provide additional expressivity for things that are harder to do in SQL and very easy in R, as part of the data pipeline. We do not allow to run some system calls and do not allow to install additional packages. Having said that, we do currently include some good basis with plyr, dplyr, reshape, and more will be added based on demand.
- nugator 10y ago
  Looks cool. But what connects to my database? I think you could explain that a bit more on your site.
  - ianformanek 10y ago
    Right, this would benefit from being a bit clearer. Our backend query execution service connects to the customer's own DB as a client. The connection can be secured via SSH tunnel and firewall rules (for our NAT gateway IP addresses) - that way the database would never have to be exposed to the internet (as it never should be).
- Maarten88 10y ago
  The market for data visualization tools is crowded and has gotten very competitive in the past year. Specifically, how does Cluvio compare to Microsoft PowerBI? That also (already) has support for R, supports many more data sources, seems to be more polished/mature, and is a lot less expensive, it even has a free desktop version.
  - runako 10y ago
    I was curious and hadn't heard about PowerBI before, so I checked the site just now. Some obvious differences: PowerBI is priced per user, so it can get expensive fast (assuming you need the pro features). Also, there doesn't appear to be a cloud version of PowerBI so you'd be managing it yourself. PowerBI doesn't support AWS Redshift or Aurora. And unless I'm mistaken, PowerBI desktop is Windows-only.
    - Maarten88 10y ago
      You should read a bit further, I think only your last assumption is correct: there is indeed no desktop client for Mac, so you have to use Windows to design dashboards/reports. There are web, native windows, android and ios interactive report viewers. With a single paid license you can publish to the cloud and make reports available to anyone, even embed it in a website or app. There's even a Redshift connector in preview.
kjbflsudfb 10y ago
Under "Features" is 'Database Almanach' supposed to read 'Almanac' (no 'h')?
- ianformanek 10y ago
  Thanks for the report - I actually noticed from spell checker (not being a native speaker) the other day that 'almanach' is not the most common spelling, but it is listed as an alternate spelling on wikipedia, so unless it obviously comes across as a typo we'd keep it (to perhaps make it sound more like a DnD spellbook ;-) )
  - huac 10y ago
    I think 'almanack' would be more recognizably 'almanac' from an English speaker's viewpoint (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poor_Richard%27s_Almanack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poor_Richard%27s_Almanack), and still preserve that 'fantasy' vibe
jkxyz 10y ago
I've already suggested this as a replacement for my company's Informatica/Salesforce/Custom reporting setup, which is a huge, confusing, and time-consuming mess, for something that's really not business critical. Looks to be a great balance of simplicity and power.
- Maarius 10y ago
  Thanks :)
zgao 10y ago
Is this basically Mode for R?
- ianformanek 10y ago
  There are some similarities conceptually (SQL-based analytics, use of R or Python to give additional capabilities). There are more differences in the visualisation capabilities, user experience and pricing (esp. with larger number of business users that should make use of the analytics results, which are free in our case).
- driftlogic 10y ago
  I have a lot of experience with Chartio and Mode. I looked at the demo video, it didn’t appear to allow embedding of anything that R would output but rather just appended data that was manipulated within R back to the output of the original query. Mode has python notebook integrated and can read in your queries as datasets and then embed whatever you render from python. You cannot modify the original data of the query within the python notebook and then use mode's stock visualizations from the data you created in python. This is a pretty big difference between the two if I'm understanding it correctly. The GUI/Dashboarding of this looks way better than mode. I'm curious how Cluvio supports filters such as drop down menus, filters based on dynamic queries (vs. hardcoded), and supporting drop down filters with multi select. (Mode does these things very poorly, chartio does them pretty well).
  - ianformanek 10y ago
    Very good points. Re: the R output - for us the R script is an optional step on the data pipeline, it can be either of these 2: SQL Query -> (data table) -> visualisation SQL Query -> (data table) -> R script -> (data table) -> visualisation i.e. the R step is injected, takes data as input and produces data (in the form of data.frame, vector of values or primitive values) as output. Re: the filters. We support time-based filters very well with a nice UI (custom time ranges, time ranges relative to today, additional comparison time range). Custom value filters are currently in beta and once launched (in couple weeks) will support multi-select as well as values based on dynamic queries.
sv123 10y ago
Plans for MS Sql Server support soon?
- Maarius 10y ago
  It is planned, yes. We will add support for additional databases based on the demand of our customers, so you becoming one would likely make it happen earlier :)
  - ogsharkman 10y ago
    That's a weird statement for people who need mssql support.
apathy 10y ago
nicely done, hope it works out as a business for youse guise
- Maarius 10y ago
  Thanks!
vittore 10y ago
So which RDBMS do you guys support?
- ianformanek 10y ago
  At the moment we fully support Postgres, AWS Redshift, MySQL/MariaDB, AWS Aurora. More to come as we see demand (comment here please!)
tomasztomczyk 10y ago
We're playing with Google Data Studio, which has Google Spreadsheets and BigQuery support. How does this differ, assuming these integrations will be supported in the future?
- ianformanek 10y ago
  I am not too familiar with all capabilities of the Google Data Studio, but from what I know they take a bit more the Tableau approach to defining data sources as results of queries (BigData, MySQL) or sheets data. I'd say Cluvio would be a bit more fun to use for anyone who knows SQL, the ability to quickly iterate through sql queries to nail down the exact results is quite addictive. Plus the additional capabilities of R make it even more productive for lots of harder cases.
infinite8s 10y ago
Do you guys offer on-premise deployment?
- Maarius 10y ago
  At the moment we are a pure software as a service and do not support on-premise installation.
Maarius 10y ago
Please feel free to also join the discussion on Product Hunt: https://www.producthunt.com/tech/cluvio https://www.producthunt.com/tech/cluvio

61 points by Maarius 10y ago

Hey, I'm Marius, one of the founders of Cluvio. Cluvio allows you to run SQL queries against your database, visualize the results as beautiful dashboards and share these dashboards within your company. We have integrated an R engine in the pipeline, so you can run custom R script on the sql results to get combined power of SQL and R. After working on Cluvio for 18 months, we launch today and would love to hear your feedback. Please use 'hacker-news-discount' when signing up to get a 30% discount for the first three months.

alex95 10y ago
Hi Marius, In regards to the pricing, I feel that something like this is quite highly marked up. Your pricing strategy puts me off a lot considering that what you're offering is essentially an SQL dashboard. Can you shed some light on how you've came to this price? I know enterprise users are going to be like "300 a month is nothing" but enterprise users are more than likely going to be using proprietary software rather than looking for a software like this. You're also limiting yourself to SQL here, so that already diminishes your target market and continues to ask questions about your pricing. Not so much an argument starter or me trying to be an idiot, but just questions/advice.
cy4n0gen 10y ago
Product looks pretty cool. I'm curious as to what the limitations of the R integration are though. Do you allow for different packages to be installed or is that something your team manages?
- ianformanek 10y ago
  Hi there, Ian here, the other founder of Cluvio. There are some limitations to the R execution environment, as you correctly expect, as a result of running custom code in the hosted environment. Our use case for R is to provide additional expressivity for things that are harder to do in SQL and very easy in R, as part of the data pipeline. We do not allow to run some system calls and do not allow to install additional packages. Having said that, we do currently include some good basis with plyr, dplyr, reshape, and more will be added based on demand.
nugator 10y ago
Looks cool. But what connects to my database? I think you could explain that a bit more on your site.
- ianformanek 10y ago
  Right, this would benefit from being a bit clearer. Our backend query execution service connects to the customer's own DB as a client. The connection can be secured via SSH tunnel and firewall rules (for our NAT gateway IP addresses) - that way the database would never have to be exposed to the internet (as it never should be).
Maarten88 10y ago
The market for data visualization tools is crowded and has gotten very competitive in the past year. Specifically, how does Cluvio compare to Microsoft PowerBI? That also (already) has support for R, supports many more data sources, seems to be more polished/mature, and is a lot less expensive, it even has a free desktop version.
- runako 10y ago
  I was curious and hadn't heard about PowerBI before, so I checked the site just now. Some obvious differences: PowerBI is priced per user, so it can get expensive fast (assuming you need the pro features). Also, there doesn't appear to be a cloud version of PowerBI so you'd be managing it yourself. PowerBI doesn't support AWS Redshift or Aurora. And unless I'm mistaken, PowerBI desktop is Windows-only.
  - Maarten88 10y ago
    You should read a bit further, I think only your last assumption is correct: there is indeed no desktop client for Mac, so you have to use Windows to design dashboards/reports. There are web, native windows, android and ios interactive report viewers. With a single paid license you can publish to the cloud and make reports available to anyone, even embed it in a website or app. There's even a Redshift connector in preview.

kjbflsudfb 10y ago

Under "Features" is 'Database Almanach' supposed to read 'Almanac' (no 'h')?

ianformanek 10y ago
Thanks for the report - I actually noticed from spell checker (not being a native speaker) the other day that 'almanach' is not the most common spelling, but it is listed as an alternate spelling on wikipedia, so unless it obviously comes across as a typo we'd keep it (to perhaps make it sound more like a DnD spellbook ;-) )
- huac 10y ago
  I think 'almanack' would be more recognizably 'almanac' from an English speaker's viewpoint (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poor_Richard%27s_Almanack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poor_Richard%27s_Almanack), and still preserve that 'fantasy' vibe

jkxyz 10y ago

I've already suggested this as a replacement for my company's Informatica/Salesforce/Custom reporting setup, which is a huge, confusing, and time-consuming mess, for something that's really not business critical. Looks to be a great balance of simplicity and power.

Maarius 10y ago
Thanks :)

zgao 10y ago

Is this basically Mode for R?

ianformanek 10y ago
There are some similarities conceptually (SQL-based analytics, use of R or Python to give additional capabilities). There are more differences in the visualisation capabilities, user experience and pricing (esp. with larger number of business users that should make use of the analytics results, which are free in our case).
driftlogic 10y ago
I have a lot of experience with Chartio and Mode. I looked at the demo video, it didn’t appear to allow embedding of anything that R would output but rather just appended data that was manipulated within R back to the output of the original query. Mode has python notebook integrated and can read in your queries as datasets and then embed whatever you render from python. You cannot modify the original data of the query within the python notebook and then use mode's stock visualizations from the data you created in python. This is a pretty big difference between the two if I'm understanding it correctly. The GUI/Dashboarding of this looks way better than mode. I'm curious how Cluvio supports filters such as drop down menus, filters based on dynamic queries (vs. hardcoded), and supporting drop down filters with multi select. (Mode does these things very poorly, chartio does them pretty well).
- ianformanek 10y ago
  Very good points. Re: the R output - for us the R script is an optional step on the data pipeline, it can be either of these 2: SQL Query -> (data table) -> visualisation SQL Query -> (data table) -> R script -> (data table) -> visualisation i.e. the R step is injected, takes data as input and produces data (in the form of data.frame, vector of values or primitive values) as output. Re: the filters. We support time-based filters very well with a nice UI (custom time ranges, time ranges relative to today, additional comparison time range). Custom value filters are currently in beta and once launched (in couple weeks) will support multi-select as well as values based on dynamic queries.

sv123 10y ago

Plans for MS Sql Server support soon?

Maarius 10y ago
It is planned, yes. We will add support for additional databases based on the demand of our customers, so you becoming one would likely make it happen earlier :)
- ogsharkman 10y ago
  That's a weird statement for people who need mssql support.

apathy 10y ago

nicely done, hope it works out as a business for youse guise

Maarius 10y ago
Thanks!

vittore 10y ago

So which RDBMS do you guys support?

ianformanek 10y ago
At the moment we fully support Postgres, AWS Redshift, MySQL/MariaDB, AWS Aurora. More to come as we see demand (comment here please!)

tomasztomczyk 10y ago

We're playing with Google Data Studio, which has Google Spreadsheets and BigQuery support. How does this differ, assuming these integrations will be supported in the future?

ianformanek 10y ago
I am not too familiar with all capabilities of the Google Data Studio, but from what I know they take a bit more the Tableau approach to defining data sources as results of queries (BigData, MySQL) or sheets data. I'd say Cluvio would be a bit more fun to use for anyone who knows SQL, the ability to quickly iterate through sql queries to nail down the exact results is quite addictive. Plus the additional capabilities of R make it even more productive for lots of harder cases.

infinite8s 10y ago

Do you guys offer on-premise deployment?

Maarius 10y ago
At the moment we are a pure software as a service and do not support on-premise installation.

Maarius 10y ago

Please feel free to also join the discussion on Product Hunt: https://www.producthunt.com/tech/cluvio https://www.producthunt.com/tech/cluvio