With the recent release of TIBCO Spotfire 12.0 LTS, we are glad to announce the availability of the Discngine Connector 5.8 for Spotfire and Pipeline Pilot. This new release is fully compatible with all the supported LTS versions of Spotfire (10.10, 11.4 and 12.0) and Pipeline Pilot (2022)

Why should you upgrade to Spotfire 12.0 LTS?

With the Discngine Connector product team we identified key changes worth the upgrade to 12.0.

Cloud-native Management, full Linux support, and Auto-scaling for All Spotfire Services

It sounds a bit “techy,” but this change will significantly and positively impact how organizations use Spotfire. Manual installation, configuration, and upgrade of Spotfire environments are complex tasks requiring expertise and time. Therefore, organizations were constrained to restrict the number of server environments and space out upgrades. The promise of the new Cloud Deployment Kit for TIBCO Spotfire® is to automate the entire provisioning of Spotfire server environments including complete configuration and enable use of cloud elasticity for auto-scaling. Our  Discngine Cloud Infrastructure team is ready to help our customers with setting up containers and Helm charts on a Kubernetes cluster to accelerate transition to Spotfire 12.0 LTS.

Improvements for Data Functions

TIBCO added a lot of performance and usability features for Data Functions in all mainstream 11.x versions and in the new 12.0 LTS. I personally really like the ability to insert Pipeline Pilot (or KNIME) Data Functions directly in Spotfire Web Player (Business Author). The possibility of tuning Data Function parameters in the visualization panels is also great. Lastly, if you use many Data functions in your documents, the new canvas UI showing Data Function Lineage is quite helpful.

More for Mods

Since Spotfire 11.4 LTS was released, many improvements have been added to the Mods framework for both end-users and developers. With these recent changes, Mods have become a very efficient way to extend Spotfire visual capabilities with business-specific charts. See Discngine’s Cards and Sunburst for Hierarchical Clustering Mods below.

The extension of the API coverage allows us to create close-to-native visuals (Mods API reference: https://tibcosoftware.github.io/spotfire-mods/api-docs/ ). Feel free to submit Mods development requests to the team: connector@discngine.com

Library Versioning History

One of the most requested features is finally available!  The implementation should address many expectations:

“Tracks application changes and makes it easier to recover previous Spotfire library states. This includes browsing saved analysis versions with the option to revert to any previously saved version through either “restore” or by saving a previous version”

Though, I was surprised by the UX chosen here. The UI used to manage the documents’ versions is only visible in the Web Player version of the Library Management interface. Nothing is available in the Spotfire Analyst except a link pointing to the version management web page. Another sign that Spotfire is going to be a web only application in a near future?

What’s new in Connector 5.8

Detailed changes available here: https://connector.discngine.com/spotfire/pipelinepilot/changelog.html

Chromium engine in the Discngine Web Panel for Spotfire Analyst

Following the announcement of the end of support for Internet Explorer 11, a new Microsoft Edge based engine has been added for the Web Panel in the Spotfire Analyst. The previous versions used the legacy .Net browser control based on Internet Explorer engine. This option is available from Spotfire 11.4 and above versions. To activate it, go to Spotfire Administration Panel > Preferences > DiscngineWebPanel > Configuration, and set UseWebViewFeature to True.

When configured this way, the WebPanel will run like a MS Edge browser. You will be able to benefit from modern web APIs and developer tools (visible by pressing F12).

New Pipeline Pilot components for Data Table Transformations

A new method addDataTransformations has been added to the Connector API to allow to add data transformations on a given data table in a single transformations group.

A set of Pipeline Pilot components has been added to insert each type of supported data transformations.

New Pipeline Pilot components for Data Functions

A new method addDataFunction has been added to the Connector API to add and execute a data function registered in the library in the current document. The method getDataFunctionFromLibraryAsync has been added to the SpotfireDocument to retrieve the definition of a data function registered in the Spotfire Library. This method can be used to know the exact names and types of data function parameters. To list data functions in the library, you can use the getLibraryContentAsync method (see below).

A Pipeline Pilot component Add Data Function from Library has been added to the collection to allow users to insert and execute a data function registered in the library in a Spotfire document from Pipeline Pilot.  

Compatibility

All the supported LTS versions of Spotfire (10.10, 11.4 and 12.0)

All supported version of Pipeline Pilot

What about the other Connectors?

You may have heard Discngine is extending the Connector principles to other products. The KNIME Data functions have been tested and compatible with Spotfire 12.0. Same for the Schrödinger LiveDesign Connector for Spotfire.

Learn more about these products: https://www.discngine.com/connector

How to get the newest release

Go to the download section of the Connector general documentation page https://connector.discngine.com/download-center.html