6 ms·

Microsoft open sources SandDance, a visual data exploration tool

136 points by GordonS 7y ago

conqrr 7y ago
Yet another example of Megacorp attempting to swallow smaller fish (Tableau), which showed a great example of leading the market with something innovative and high quality. I haven't used PowerBI, but I have a feeling already that this is going to work great for Microsoft.
- algorithmsRcool 7y ago
  But isn't Tableau owned by Salesforce now? That evens the playing field some. Also, this is a free and now open source tool from Microsoft Research that is independent of PowerBI.
- manigandham 7y ago
  Tableau did very well and was acquired by Salesforce. Looker went to Google, Periscope went to Sisense, and there are still dozens of new upstarts. I don't see how a free open-source visualization library is going to harm these companies, if anything it should help new startups with their own products.
- nerdponx 7y ago
  Also it's open source, which Tableau is not.
- aaomidi 7y ago
  Are you finding a way to complain about an open source tool? Really?
- _bxg1 7y ago
  Tableau's licensing model/architecture is fairly draconian. You can't even test it out for free without giving them public access to all the data you use to test, and you can't embed it in a web app without having a dedicated Tableau server process backing it. It's possible these constraints make sense for enormous enterprise customers, but they make it impractical for small companies.
  - prepend 7y ago
    They have a 30 day eval that’s pretty decent for testing.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
manigandham 7y ago
This is a pretty neat package, and it's suprising how much it contains. Reminds me of the Vega project [1] which never really got as much popularity as it should have. 1. https://vega.github.io/ https://vega.github.io/
- rjmorris 7y ago
  The SandDance README says it uses Vega for chart layout.
  - manigandham 7y ago
    Missed that. Great to see the uptake then.
- ptrott2017 7y ago
  strongly recommend folks interested in data viz investigate Vegas further and especially VEGAS, VEGAS-LITE and the related projects such as Voyager, LYRA and CompassQL. As noted below/above great to see it used in SandDance
pedrokost 7y ago
2 months ago I discovered Kepler[0] a tool by Uber for visualizing geo data. It has been of tremendous help when analyzing large geospatial datasets. It allows me to quickly visualize the results of my computations, and spot anomalies and patterns that I wouldn't have noted without it. This seems to be a similar tool, but for charting non-geographic datasets. It should also be extremely useful. I am glad companies are making these tools available for the masses. [0] https://kepler.gl/ https://kepler.gl/
- noen 7y ago
  Both Kepler and Sanddance are built on top of another Uber creation called https://deck.gl https://deck.gl
uberman 7y ago
I guess I'm a little slow, but I was surprised that a plot of latitude and longitude would generate something that looked like a map. Of course thinking about it, it makes complete sense but I was genuinely surprised at first.
hbcondo714 7y ago
> SandDance shows every single row of a dataset (for datasets up to ~500K rows) That is most impressive. Their online demo[1] has about 25K rows. [1] https://sanddance.js.org/app/ https://sanddance.js.org/app/
mistermann 7y ago
What would be some unique uses for this that one perhaps couldn't accomplish with more traditional visualizations, any ideas?
_bxg1 7y ago
> The release is comprised of several components that work in native JavaScript or React apps This is worded poorly; at first I thought it meant React Native. I can only tell that's not what it means because "native JavaScript", despite being a weird term, wouldn't refer to that.
skilesare 7y ago
A company I worked for built this almost 10 years ago. Here is our video from SIFMA where we gave a joint presentation with Microsoft. Interesting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KBaX_t_hvM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KBaX_t_hvM

136 points by GordonS 7y ago

Yet another example of Megacorp attempting to swallow smaller fish (Tableau), which showed a great example of leading the market with something innovative and high quality. I haven't used PowerBI, but I have a feeling already that this is going to work great for Microsoft.

algorithmsRcool 7y ago
But isn't Tableau owned by Salesforce now? That evens the playing field some. Also, this is a free and now open source tool from Microsoft Research that is independent of PowerBI.
manigandham 7y ago
Tableau did very well and was acquired by Salesforce. Looker went to Google, Periscope went to Sisense, and there are still dozens of new upstarts. I don't see how a free open-source visualization library is going to harm these companies, if anything it should help new startups with their own products.
nerdponx 7y ago
Also it's open source, which Tableau is not.
aaomidi 7y ago
Are you finding a way to complain about an open source tool? Really?
_bxg1 7y ago
Tableau's licensing model/architecture is fairly draconian. You can't even test it out for free without giving them public access to all the data you use to test, and you can't embed it in a web app without having a dedicated Tableau server process backing it. It's possible these constraints make sense for enormous enterprise customers, but they make it impractical for small companies.
- prepend 7y ago
  They have a 30 day eval that’s pretty decent for testing.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]

manigandham 7y ago

This is a pretty neat package, and it's suprising how much it contains. Reminds me of the Vega project [1] which never really got as much popularity as it should have. 1. https://vega.github.io/ https://vega.github.io/

rjmorris 7y ago
The SandDance README says it uses Vega for chart layout.
- manigandham 7y ago
  Missed that. Great to see the uptake then.
ptrott2017 7y ago
strongly recommend folks interested in data viz investigate Vegas further and especially VEGAS, VEGAS-LITE and the related projects such as Voyager, LYRA and CompassQL. As noted below/above great to see it used in SandDance

pedrokost 7y ago

2 months ago I discovered Kepler[0] a tool by Uber for visualizing geo data. It has been of tremendous help when analyzing large geospatial datasets. It allows me to quickly visualize the results of my computations, and spot anomalies and patterns that I wouldn't have noted without it. This seems to be a similar tool, but for charting non-geographic datasets. It should also be extremely useful. I am glad companies are making these tools available for the masses. [0] https://kepler.gl/ https://kepler.gl/

noen 7y ago
Both Kepler and Sanddance are built on top of another Uber creation called https://deck.gl https://deck.gl

uberman 7y ago

I guess I'm a little slow, but I was surprised that a plot of latitude and longitude would generate something that looked like a map. Of course thinking about it, it makes complete sense but I was genuinely surprised at first.

hbcondo714 7y ago

> SandDance shows every single row of a dataset (for datasets up to ~500K rows) That is most impressive. Their online demo[1] has about 25K rows. [1] https://sanddance.js.org/app/ https://sanddance.js.org/app/

mistermann 7y ago

What would be some unique uses for this that one perhaps couldn't accomplish with more traditional visualizations, any ideas?

_bxg1 7y ago

> The release is comprised of several components that work in native JavaScript or React apps This is worded poorly; at first I thought it meant React Native. I can only tell that's not what it means because "native JavaScript", despite being a weird term, wouldn't refer to that.

skilesare 7y ago

A company I worked for built this almost 10 years ago. Here is our video from SIFMA where we gave a joint presentation with Microsoft. Interesting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KBaX_t_hvM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KBaX_t_hvM