5 ms·

Had a very good experience with Superset. Superset allowed us to replace Tableau and not looking back Took me a while figure out how to embed it into my app u

Had a very good experience with Superset. Superset allowed us to replace Tableau and not looking back Took me a while figure out how to embed it into my app using Superset Embedded SDK. Superset Embedded SDK - "Embedded SDK allows you to embed dashboards from Superset into your own app, using your app's authentication. Embedding is done by inserting an iframe, containing a Superset page, into the host application." https://github.com/apache/superset/tree/master/superset-embedded-sdk https://github.com/apache/superset/tree/master/superset-embe... Superset is based on very high quality and well maintained chart library eChart https://echarts.apache.org/examples/en/#chart-type-linesG https://echarts.apache.org/examples/en/#chart-type-linesG Community Roadmap https://github.com/apache/superset/projects?query=is%3Aopen https://github.com/apache/superset/projects?query=is%3Aopen Huge respect to Preset.io and its team for contributing to the project and keep it in a great shape https://preset.io/blog/ https://preset.io/blog/ Superset source code is very easy to read and understand, and as a result it's possible to implement some advanced caching techniques reduce the load on charts. No BI is perfect. Watching Superset for years gives me confidence the project will work as supposed down the road, and eventually some of its packages can be reusable for all kind of visualizations and data hacking. Our main approach to visualisation is to start with eChart and simple Reactjs wrapping and spin off Superset on subdomain for power users, and later see which one works better. Same look gives a very pleasant experience.

boyka 3y ago
I have no experience with Superset. Can you elaborate on a few points where you see it excel beyond Tableau?
- adeptima 3y ago
  I dont want to start a rant against Tableau. It's a powerhouse. It's a great superior software. But when it comes to optimizing cost and comparing the total cost of ownership and opportunity to stop paying for Tableau server license we voted in favor of Superset and mix of Reactjs+Echarts widgets. https://www.tableau.com/products/server https://www.tableau.com/products/server If you have money, dedicated team of data analytics who are already familiar with Tableau - no need to torture them with other tools.
  - skadamat 3y ago
    Honestly it's so hard to compare Tableau and Superset. Tableau has every feature and bell / whistle imagine-able. But it's heavy, desktop oriented, and pricey. Superset is lightweight and open source, but only has 5% of the features. So it really depends what you need!
Jzush 3y ago
I’d like to see these types of apps start offering SVG embedding of things like graphs. Frames are such a pain.
- rusackas 3y ago
  That's probably not trivial, but it seems plausible. The beauty of open source is that you can help contribute this if you're fired up about it!
- wswope 3y ago
  Bokeh is an option in the frontend-viz space that puts out pretty solid SVG for statically-rendered charts, while also having the option of more Tableau-like interactive functionality with input fields, dynamic filters, etc. Might be a decent option for you? Their interactive "embedded-mode" avoids iframes too... but it's built with web components, so you wind up in shadow-DOM hell if you want to do anything dynamic on the view's contents.
hughess 3y ago
We use ECharts in our open source BI tool (Evidence) and it's a great library. Has helped us build a declarative syntax for viz which can be version controlled (https://evidence.dev https://evidence.dev) Previous HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35645464 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35645464 (97 comments)
- adeptima 3y ago
  Looks great! Reminds me Obsidian DataView but with charts https://github.com/blacksmithgu/obsidian-dataview https://github.com/blacksmithgu/obsidian-dataview This whole ideas to have data, visualisations and knowledge base in one private offline place is very appealing
  - hughess 3y ago
    We're fans of Obsidian! DataView looks cool - love the ability to define the tables in code inline in the markdown. That's similar to how we inline DuckDB WASM SQL queries in markdown: https://docs.evidence.dev/core-concepts/queries/ https://docs.evidence.dev/core-concepts/queries/
  - archiewood 3y ago
    I love Obsidian. The Markdown <-> Markup typing experience is just so good compared to e.g. Slack, Reddit and other markdown-esque tools
- meekaaku 3y ago
  Evidence looks cool, and I evaluated sometime back. The docs says the pages are all pre-rendered for all possible combinations. Is that the case still? If so, if I have a date filter, is it going to pre-render all possible dates?
  - hughess 3y ago
    We recently changed our architecture to include interactivity without having to pre-render all combinations. Pages are still pre-rendered with their initial content, but each Evidence app now ships with filter components and an in-browser DuckDB instance so you can build interactive apps. We call this Universal SQL - if you're interested, we wrote up our rationale for doing this here: https://evidence.dev/blog/why-we-built-usql/ https://evidence.dev/blog/why-we-built-usql/ Here's an example project with some filter components and custom styling: https://ecommerce.evidence.app/ https://ecommerce.evidence.app/ This is still a static app - the data warehouse was only hit during the app's build process
klaussilveira 3y ago
How do you deal with data visibility and permissions? I mean, most tables have data that should only be seen by a specific user or group ID, and that layer is usually handled by the application. It would be awesome to expose the power of Superset for users, but I imagine creating the security layer would be a pain.
- re5i5tor 3y ago
  I have this question too
  - Ringz 3y ago
    https://superset.apache.org/docs/security/ https://superset.apache.org/docs/security/
- spdustin 3y ago
  You can use row-level security, or specify RBAC with pretty much any SQL query.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
prabhatsharma 3y ago
eCharts is awesome. We moved from plotly after using it for several months to echarts at https://github.com/openobserve/openobserve https://github.com/openobserve/openobserve and are super happy.
j-a-a-p 3y ago
Had good results with echarts. With Superset not so much: complicated to install, lost all dashboards after an update, cryptic error messages, custom queries meh: we decided to use views in Postgres. The project with Superset was finished successfully, but the time spend is a multiple compared to using something like Power BI. All in all, not very innovative, but highly needed open source version of a traditional BI tool. Definitely something to follow and to use in temporary, not too demanding use cases. And hopefully a future replacement of Tableau or Power BI.

boyka 3y ago

I have no experience with Superset. Can you elaborate on a few points where you see it excel beyond Tableau?

adeptima 3y ago
I dont want to start a rant against Tableau. It's a powerhouse. It's a great superior software. But when it comes to optimizing cost and comparing the total cost of ownership and opportunity to stop paying for Tableau server license we voted in favor of Superset and mix of Reactjs+Echarts widgets. https://www.tableau.com/products/server https://www.tableau.com/products/server If you have money, dedicated team of data analytics who are already familiar with Tableau - no need to torture them with other tools.
- skadamat 3y ago
  Honestly it's so hard to compare Tableau and Superset. Tableau has every feature and bell / whistle imagine-able. But it's heavy, desktop oriented, and pricey. Superset is lightweight and open source, but only has 5% of the features. So it really depends what you need!

Jzush 3y ago

I’d like to see these types of apps start offering SVG embedding of things like graphs. Frames are such a pain.

rusackas 3y ago
That's probably not trivial, but it seems plausible. The beauty of open source is that you can help contribute this if you're fired up about it!
wswope 3y ago
Bokeh is an option in the frontend-viz space that puts out pretty solid SVG for statically-rendered charts, while also having the option of more Tableau-like interactive functionality with input fields, dynamic filters, etc. Might be a decent option for you? Their interactive "embedded-mode" avoids iframes too... but it's built with web components, so you wind up in shadow-DOM hell if you want to do anything dynamic on the view's contents.

hughess 3y ago

We use ECharts in our open source BI tool (Evidence) and it's a great library. Has helped us build a declarative syntax for viz which can be version controlled (https://evidence.dev https://evidence.dev) Previous HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35645464 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35645464 (97 comments)

adeptima 3y ago
Looks great! Reminds me Obsidian DataView but with charts https://github.com/blacksmithgu/obsidian-dataview https://github.com/blacksmithgu/obsidian-dataview This whole ideas to have data, visualisations and knowledge base in one private offline place is very appealing
- hughess 3y ago
  We're fans of Obsidian! DataView looks cool - love the ability to define the tables in code inline in the markdown. That's similar to how we inline DuckDB WASM SQL queries in markdown: https://docs.evidence.dev/core-concepts/queries/ https://docs.evidence.dev/core-concepts/queries/
- archiewood 3y ago
  I love Obsidian. The Markdown <-> Markup typing experience is just so good compared to e.g. Slack, Reddit and other markdown-esque tools
meekaaku 3y ago
Evidence looks cool, and I evaluated sometime back. The docs says the pages are all pre-rendered for all possible combinations. Is that the case still? If so, if I have a date filter, is it going to pre-render all possible dates?
- hughess 3y ago
  We recently changed our architecture to include interactivity without having to pre-render all combinations. Pages are still pre-rendered with their initial content, but each Evidence app now ships with filter components and an in-browser DuckDB instance so you can build interactive apps. We call this Universal SQL - if you're interested, we wrote up our rationale for doing this here: https://evidence.dev/blog/why-we-built-usql/ https://evidence.dev/blog/why-we-built-usql/ Here's an example project with some filter components and custom styling: https://ecommerce.evidence.app/ https://ecommerce.evidence.app/ This is still a static app - the data warehouse was only hit during the app's build process

klaussilveira 3y ago

How do you deal with data visibility and permissions? I mean, most tables have data that should only be seen by a specific user or group ID, and that layer is usually handled by the application. It would be awesome to expose the power of Superset for users, but I imagine creating the security layer would be a pain.

re5i5tor 3y ago
I have this question too
- Ringz 3y ago
  https://superset.apache.org/docs/security/ https://superset.apache.org/docs/security/
spdustin 3y ago
You can use row-level security, or specify RBAC with pretty much any SQL query.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

prabhatsharma 3y ago

eCharts is awesome. We moved from plotly after using it for several months to echarts at https://github.com/openobserve/openobserve https://github.com/openobserve/openobserve and are super happy.

j-a-a-p 3y ago

Had good results with echarts. With Superset not so much: complicated to install, lost all dashboards after an update, cryptic error messages, custom queries meh: we decided to use views in Postgres. The project with Superset was finished successfully, but the time spend is a multiple compared to using something like Power BI. All in all, not very innovative, but highly needed open source version of a traditional BI tool. Definitely something to follow and to use in temporary, not too demanding use cases. And hopefully a future replacement of Tableau or Power BI.