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Used D3 for a grad data viz course project a year or two ago. Extremely powerful but unless you are doing custom visualizations or are excellent in JavaScript

by Vaslo 7y ago

Used D3 for a grad data viz course project a year or two ago. Extremely powerful but unless you are doing custom visualizations or are excellent in JavaScript and Visualization it’s a bit overkill. Much easier to do monthly reporting or even one off stuff in Tableau, Power BI, or the like. Tableau or Power BI I could pass to other analysts and without experience they could figure it out. If I sent them my d3 code they would cry. Again if doing advanced visualizations for a large newspaper, commercial presentation, it’s extremely customizable and makes some really beautiful charts.

sailfast 7y ago
Using a non-proprietary platform also has the distinct advantage of supporting whatever APIs you want to use and not having to deal with extracts of data. Having to wait for one of these platforms to support JSON from a web URL is really quite silly when you could write the query quickly (in python or whatever) and pass the values to your view. Or, you know, use PyGal or another server-side charting library: http://www.pygal.org/en/stable/ http://www.pygal.org/en/stable/
- inferiorhuman 7y ago
  Or, you know, use PyGal or another server-side charting library: http://www.pygal.org/en/stable/ http://www.pygal.org/en/stable/ Is there much of a market for server-side rendering? I've been putzing around with a d3-inspired charting library in Rust mostly as a brain teaser though.
  - dreamcompiler 7y ago
    I very much prefer to generate svg charts on the server. Not only is this more sensible when you have a huge number of data points, but it even works with js turned off (unless you need interactivity).
    - sings 7y ago
      Not disagreeing – I do this often too – but the downside can be having a very large dataset which in turn generates a very large response, which might be more efficiently sent as data and constructed client-side. Less importantly, Google’s lighthouse tests for a certain number of DOM elements, which a complex chart can easily exceed.
      - inferiorhuman 7y ago
        Yeah my server-side use cases are for times when I'd want to use a graph outside of a browser (e.g. PDF reports, printing, email distribution). If you're targeting a browser IMO it only makes sense to move away from the browser and/or JS if you're trying to create a static, raster image.
boringg 7y ago
Completely agree with this statement. Wish it was implementable similar to a tableau or something for more universal appeal -- or alternatively it had enough easily default applications with the ability to go much more custom if you needed/wanted to.
Mountain_Skies 7y ago
Aren't Tableau and PowerBI both expensive for anything other than the most trivial visualization scenarios?
- gameofcode 7y ago
  Anecdotally, I've worked with a lot of companies who are already on the Microsoft stack and either get heavy discounts for Power BI or already have it included in their Enterprise licenses. (There's also another class of companies who refuse to look at any competing product if Microsoft have an offering...) My recommendation to the technical decision makers in those companies who are either confined to Power BI or just feel a lot safer working in that environment (instead of investing heavily in development time to recreate the same thing) is to embrace the Power BI service out of the box as much as possible, and then if they really need to, create custom D3 Visuals for their reports (yes, this is possible with Power BI, I was quite delighted when I discovered this): https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/developer/visuals/custom-visual-develop-tutorial https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/developer/visuals/....

by Vaslo 7y ago

sailfast 7y ago

Using a non-proprietary platform also has the distinct advantage of supporting whatever APIs you want to use and not having to deal with extracts of data. Having to wait for one of these platforms to support JSON from a web URL is really quite silly when you could write the query quickly (in python or whatever) and pass the values to your view. Or, you know, use PyGal or another server-side charting library: http://www.pygal.org/en/stable/ http://www.pygal.org/en/stable/

inferiorhuman 7y ago
Or, you know, use PyGal or another server-side charting library: http://www.pygal.org/en/stable/ http://www.pygal.org/en/stable/ Is there much of a market for server-side rendering? I've been putzing around with a d3-inspired charting library in Rust mostly as a brain teaser though.
- dreamcompiler 7y ago
  I very much prefer to generate svg charts on the server. Not only is this more sensible when you have a huge number of data points, but it even works with js turned off (unless you need interactivity).
  - sings 7y ago
    Not disagreeing – I do this often too – but the downside can be having a very large dataset which in turn generates a very large response, which might be more efficiently sent as data and constructed client-side. Less importantly, Google’s lighthouse tests for a certain number of DOM elements, which a complex chart can easily exceed.
    - inferiorhuman 7y ago
      Yeah my server-side use cases are for times when I'd want to use a graph outside of a browser (e.g. PDF reports, printing, email distribution). If you're targeting a browser IMO it only makes sense to move away from the browser and/or JS if you're trying to create a static, raster image.

boringg 7y ago

Completely agree with this statement. Wish it was implementable similar to a tableau or something for more universal appeal -- or alternatively it had enough easily default applications with the ability to go much more custom if you needed/wanted to.

Mountain_Skies 7y ago

Aren't Tableau and PowerBI both expensive for anything other than the most trivial visualization scenarios?

gameofcode 7y ago
Anecdotally, I've worked with a lot of companies who are already on the Microsoft stack and either get heavy discounts for Power BI or already have it included in their Enterprise licenses. (There's also another class of companies who refuse to look at any competing product if Microsoft have an offering...) My recommendation to the technical decision makers in those companies who are either confined to Power BI or just feel a lot safer working in that environment (instead of investing heavily in development time to recreate the same thing) is to embrace the Power BI service out of the box as much as possible, and then if they really need to, create custom D3 Visuals for their reports (yes, this is possible with Power BI, I was quite delighted when I discovered this): https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/developer/visuals/custom-visual-develop-tutorial https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/developer/visuals/....