What's New

All of the available default map types for multi-layer mapping have been updated with fresh geographical data to provide a more detailed and immersive mapping experience.

Users of Spotfire geoanalytics are also now able to connect to GeoJSON files, making it easier to add custom geospatial data to analysis.

The Spotfire connector for PostgreSQL now supports the GPU accelerated database Brytlyt.

Users of Brytlyt will experience blazingly fast query response times for ad hoc interactive push-down queries, all without needing to import data into the Spotfire in-memory engine.

Additionally, the Spotfire Connector for MySQL now supports SingleStore (formerly MemSQL). ODBC drivers for Apache Spark SQL, Cassandra, and MongoDB have all been updated.

Spotfire users may now exclude the (All) and/or (None) options from the item, list box, and radio button filters. This functionality streamlines the auto-configuration of commonly used filters in regular reports.

Additionally, users may now set a preferred visualization type to display on default when adding data to Spotfire software.

Users of cross tables will enjoy coloring table cells by another column property or a custom expression. All of these feature enhancements help to accelerate insight generation.

The Python interpreter required to run data functions in the current version of Spotfire software was updated to 3.7, benefiting all Spotfire users leveraging native data science workflows in today’s top programming language.

The Spotfire Mods Developer Documentation has been updated with more detailed information for using the Mods API, enabling a much easier getting-started experience for enabling development of new custom analytics applications.

Other API updates include additions to the C# API allowing for automation of new 11.2 functionality noted above (radio button filters, cross table cell coloring) via IronPython scripts and C# extensions.

Microsoft Windows Server 2019 is now supported with Citrix for Spotfire Analyst and Spotfire Desktop. Support for Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops 7 1912 LSTR has been added, and support for Citrix XenApp 6.5 and 6.0 has been removed.

Microsoft Windows Server 2019 is now supported with Remote Desktop Services for Spotfire Analyst and Spotfire Desktop. Support for Remote Desktop Services with Windows Server 2008 R2 has been removed.

Spotfire users connecting to TIBCO Cloud™ Data Streams now have a self-service, no-code environment for streaming business intelligence. Blending real-time data connectivity and easy to use visual analytics, Spotfire analytics now gives users the ability to access data streams on the cloud—with no installation.

The Spotfire MySQL connector now supports both MariaDB on TIBCO Cloud™ Spotfire software and TIBCO Spotfire for AWS, allowing the ability to push live queries and refreshed data directly from TIBCO Cloud web clients to internet-facing MariaDB instances.

Spotfire users can have pop-up notifications set at the user group for greater relevance and a more tailored user experience. Administrators are now able to configure this as a default setting from the Administration Manager.

The latest version of TIBCO Enterprise Runtime for R (TERR) includes support for BioConductor R packages and full compatibility with Open Source R 4.0.2. For more details, see the full documentation.

A new option for accessing hidden intermediate data tables is now available with a "Show in user interface" feature in the Data Canvas. This expands on the previous data table properties settings to allow for creating analysis that is easier to navigate and understand.

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 is now supported as an operating system for each of the following:

• TIBCO Spotfire Server
• TIBCO Spotfire Statistics Service
• TIBCO Enterprise Runtime for R
• TIBCO Spotfire Service for Python

Additionally, it’s now possible to perform a graceful shutdown of node manager services, or order on delay, by using the command line. For more details, see full documentation.

Admins are now able to use a new command "copy-deployment-area" to create a copy of a deployment area with a new name within the same Spotfire Server. Also, another new command "export-deployment-area" allows exporting all packages in a specified deployment area and saving them in a distribution file (.sdn) for deployment to another Spotfire Server instance.

TIBCO Spotfire® Mods now offer a lightweight Javascript-based framework for building scalable, highly custom analytics applications directly within the Spotfire® environment.

Mods interact with any library, API, or workflow, always leveraging built-in Spotfire capabilities. This makes it easier for developers to create fit-for-purpose visualizations that blend into the end-user experience as if they are native. Users may also make mods freely available to others in the Spotfire community and also share them in the Spotfire Library. Development and security of mods may be governed by organizations' administrators with new features including a certificate-based trust mechanism.

Spotfire analytics now offers Amazon Redshift Ready certification along with a completely enhanced Amazon Redshift connector. With self-service support for Amazon Redshift Spectrum, users have out-of-the-box support for analyzing data in S3. This, together with the added support for geographical data and the vastly increased number of supported Amazon Redshift analytic functions, without the need to write any SQL, provides a much improved visual data prep workflow experience.

Additionally, new authentication methods include modern identity providers:

• AWS profile
• AWS IAM credentials
• AD FS
• Azure AD
• Okta
• PingFederate
• Username and password

Users of the Spotfire Analyst client will enjoy a new f(x) flyout feature enabling the pinning of frequently used data function definitions to the data panel flyout. A simple click of a pinned f(x) icon applies a data function to new analyses as a convenient and natural step in the workflow.

Spotfire Web Player software can now be configured to gracefully throttle the rendering of visualizations with streaming data, based on the Web Player CPU load. This means that use of the Web Player's CPU can be managed more efficiently, and more users can be served real-time dashboards from the same Web Player instance.

It's now possible to build a Spotfire .spk file containing a Python interpreter and automatically distribute it to all Spotfire Analyst users and server machines running the Spotfire service for Python. This ensures that all users have the ease and convenience of executing Python data functions all in one consistent platform environment.

With added functionality for making columns previously hidden in analyses visible again (e.g. attempting to delete columns that are referenced in calculated columns), improved usability now allows for building more customizable visual data pipelines and applications.

The Spotfire welcome page content is now able to be customized with content such as graphics, text, and links. This extends the possibility to co-brand your Spotfire solution as a domain or organization-specific white-labeled analytics tool.

Users of the TIBCO Spotfire® web clients can now consume Python data functions for applications built with the Spotfire® Analyst client. Now supported natively across web and installed clients as well as automation services, this tight integration between visual analytics and Python libraries for statistics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning allows users to drive computations of data functions interactively with the very same ease that users of R language packages always have.

It's now possible to add comments to custom expressions. This makes it easier to understand and maintain complex custom expressions. For users of the custom expression editor and other dialogs in the installed Spotfire Analyst client, new maximize button functionality allows for easier readability for all of the following diag editors:

• Custom expression dialog (also in the context of data transformations and calculated columns)
• Data function script dialog
• Administration manager
• Library administration
• Folder permissions on library administration
• Edit SQL in Information Designer
• Edit HTML in Edit text area
• Manage data connections

Data access enhancements are headlined by the addition of Sharepoint Online lists. With this new native connector, Spotfire users may log in to SharePoint Online instances directly, browse and select lists, and instantly load list content into data tables all within the Spotfire environment.

Federated authentication with Microsoft 365 allows for in-memory analysis through integration based on the Microsoft Graph API.

With updates to TIBCO Enterprise Runtime for R (TERR) version 5.1, the commercially supported bundled engine for the R language now includes the following:

• Spotfire Server .spk package deployment mechanism has been improved to enable more than one package containing R functions.
• Saving of SBDF files to the Spotfire library directly from TERR.
• Enhanced compatibility with R packages on CRAN.

Users of Spotfire may now arrange custom background and text colors within tables. Applying color to columns, headers, or selected data values provides a visually appealing means for highlighting analysis and accelerating speed-to-insight.

Additionally, Geoanalytics users are now able to add layers to map chart visualizations with ease by simply duplicating an existing layer from another map chart in an analysis.

The following databases are now supported as Spotfire Server database:

• Amazon Aurora for PostgreSQL
• Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL
• Azure Database for PostgreSQL
• Google Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL
• SQL Server 2019 for Linux
• SQL Server 2017 for Linux

Also, the following updates have been made:

• Spotfire Server, Node Manager, and Statistics Services upgraded to Java 11
• Improved performance when saving analysis files

The data canvas makes it easy to see which added rows, added columns, and calculated columns are included in a Spotfire final data table.

Users can now multi-select column matches and data table relationships by using the mouse in combination with the Shift and/or Ctrl key.

Additionally, there are more options to configure automatic Recommendations for newly added data tables.

Expanded data access and support now includes:

• SAP BW display attributes
• Teradata Vantage 2.0
• Edit data source server field while keeping entered username and password
• Cloudera Data Platform (CDP) Cloud Impala and https transport protocol
• IBM Netezza Performance Server

For users of C# API, it's now possible to add new top-level menus for your custom application and document tools. A custom top-level menu can also contain sub menus, providing easy in-platform access for builders of analytic applications.

TIBCO Spotfire® bar, line, and combination charts and scatter plots now support shared dual scales. This means that users can now create visualizations that display multiple columns using two scales. For users of the Spotfire Analyst client, it's also now possible to select the scale position on the right or left side of visualizations. This allows for greater customization for what's suitable by analysis type.

Visualization labels may now be configured to display values from columns in secondary data tables. This allows for highly customized descriptive naming in place of raw ID labelling to promote deeper and more intuitive end user understanding.

New data action concepts built on the Spotfire Recommendations engine now suggest automatic improvements to data preparation workflows:

• Notifies users of unnecessary whitespace characters within categorical columns
• Detects that the number of unique categorical values in a column will be reduced if a trim transformation is applied. When applied, leading and trailing whitespaces from all categorical values in selected columns are automatically removed.

In addition, Spotfire software now enables direct access from the data canvas for:

• Noting which columns and rows were added
• Adding a new calculated column to the final data table
• Editing an existing hierarchy

Spotfire users may now access Google BigQuery datasets without being a project member, and also explore Google BigQuery data by interactive marking in visualizations. The generated queries now use tuples IN, enabling the marking of more items than previously possible.

A number of new enhancements to the TIBCO Spotfire connector for PostgreSQL include:

• Snowflake on TIBCO Cloud™ Spotfire software as a service
• Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL
• Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL
• Microsoft Azure Database for PostgreSQL
• The complete list of supported data sources on TIBCO Cloud Spotfire software is available here.

Spotfire software now supports the following:

• PostgreSQL versions 11 and 12 (both for Windows and Linux) as Spotfire Server database. PostgreSQL version 12 is the latest stable version. PostgreSQL version 11 is the latest version supported by the major Cloud providers.
• Microsoft SQL Server 2019 for Windows as Spotfire Server database. Microsoft SQL Server 2019 (15.x) is the latest public release of SQL Server.
• TIBCO Spotfire Server software uses Apache Ignite for server clustering and distributed cache. Apache Ignite runs now as standalone processes instead of embedded in the Spotfire Server, allowing for significantly increased system stability. Spotfire Server processing connects to an Ignite cluster as before as well as a client.
• For Windows users, the Spotfire Analyst upgrade .exe file will be launched from the folder where Spotfire Analyst is installed and not from temporary folders.

Note: Upgrades to Spotfire Analyst 10.9 will still be executed from the temporary folder.

The most recent round of C# API enhancements allow for:

• Configuration of visualizations with dual scales. See the Visual Analytics section above for more information on dual scales.
• Creation of a data function based on a Python script.

Additionally, digital signing using local certificate stores is now supported in the Spotfire Package Builder console app, eliminating the need to provide a password on the command line.

Following the recent release of native Python data functions, users of TIBCO Spotfire® Analyst software now have a tool for managing locally used Python packages via a UI-based tool. This provides an alternative to managing these via the command line, with greater ease for importing Python packages into data functions.

It's now possible to configure Spotfire visualizations so that data can be limited by the same markings that visualizations employ. This allows for greater interactivity with drill-downs from any angle in any visualization, accelerating discovery by enabling faster time-to-insight.

The TIBCO Spotfire connector for Oracle MySQL now includes support for all of the following:

• Amazon Aurora MySQL
• Amazon RDS MySQL
• Microsoft Azure MariaDB
• Microsoft Azure MySQL

The SAP BW connector now supports SAP BW/4HANA 2.0.

The SAP HANA connector now supports auto binning.

Additionally, the latest Apache Spark SQL, Cassandra, and MongoDB ODBC drivers are now available for download as individual components of the Spotfire Server here or from TIBCO Cloud Spotfire.

The add rows recommendation has been made smarter and now uses data that has been loaded in the background.

The data loading progress dialog provides more information than before and enables users to copy the details into Spotfire software for further analysis.

Locate new details quickly; view details about selected library items, such as information links, right in the library browser for greater efficiency.

This also allows for copying to the clipboard from other programs or systems including new fields: "Modified by," "Date created," "Created by," "Modified by," "Path," "Library URL," "Web client URL," as well as "Columns" and "Prompts" details for information links.

In both Spotfire web and installed clients, it's now possible to automatically reconnect to the Spotfire Data Streams server if it's ever unavailable or restarts. Applications will now automatically reconnect without the need to reload data, which is especially useful for dashboards on public displays.

Spotfire Analyst installation procedures have been modernized and made more user-friendly. During package downloads, progress indicators are more accurate and visual designs of installation screens have been updated.

In addition, it's now possible to Whitelabel the SetupLauncher progress screen, which is useful for OEM applications.

Spotfire users will now enjoy a customizable toolbar. Every user now has the ability to get quick access to most frequently used features, while admins are also enabled to set preferences or defaults at the group level.

Labels for feature layers in map charts are now positioned automatically on geometries center without the need for any X/Y coordinate data. This makes it easier to visualize spatial features from files without coordinate information. Additionally, Map chart is now capable of rendering shapefiles and geoTIFF images even if the projection definition is not officially supported by Spotfire software, by reading and applying the projection definition contained in the imported file.

Web authors can now add and edit image layers like they are used to in the Analyst client. Image layers may also now be used to layer images over a geographical map, or, use images as a map background for geographical or non-geographical analysis.

The C# API now allows for:

• Defining custom projections to use with the map chart generated from imported geoTIFF image files, shapefiles, or as added by user
• Setting data transformations performed on results of a data connection output
• Configuring if visualizations leverage behavior of versions 10.7 or prior (when limited by their own marking)

The server upgrade process has been simplified with the Spotfire Server upgrade tool, which now:

• Preserves previously configured Java memory properties (JvmMs and JvmMx) within setenv.sh/setenv.bat.
• Detects unsupported database versions.
• Detects incompatible driver versions.
• Implements a trust store that supports multiple trust stores. As such, each server to be trusted can have a trust store, separate from the one included with the JRE, that can easily be transferred during upgrades.

As part of an upgrade process or scaling operation, any server in a Spotfire Server cluster can now be taken offline, and all users currently connecting through that server may seamlessly continue sessions on another server without re-authenticating (via load-balancer rerouting).

All running analysis sessions in the web player can also continue without losing their current state.

On top of existing OpenID Connect support to verify the identity of end users based on the authentication performed by an authorization server, the addition of support for initiating OpenID Connect login from a third party.

The OpenID Connect specification describes an optional feature through which a third party (such as an identity provider or a portal of some sort) may initiate login on a service provider.

Examples of third-party identity providers are Google, Azure AD, Okta, etc. See ThirdPartyInitiatedLogin within the OpenID Connect Core specification for more information.

Users of TIBCO Spotfire® Analyst software can now use Python libraries for math, statistics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to build data functions for applications directly within Spotfire® analytics. Now supported natively, this tight integration between visual and advanced analytics allows users to drive computations of Python data functions interactively, with the same ease that users of R language packages always have. For more information, visit TIBCO Community.

The regular Spotfire server package deployment mechanism can now be used to deploy Python packages to users as needed.

A new "show/hide" property on Spotfire analysis pages permits authors to specify whether certain pages are made visible in "Viewing" mode. This feature allows greater flexibility for customizing analyses for various consumer audiences and also gives authors the ability to disable the page navigation options altogether or turn off navigation entirely to further tailor the experience.

Additionally, the Spotfire API now allows developers to programmatically inspect and change the visibility of a page in "Viewing" mode with custom extensions or scripts.

It's now possible for geoanalytics users to leverage a "great_circle_distance" function for calculating geo-spatial distance between two points. This feature enables easier estimation of arrival times and visual alerts. Additionally, new streaming data functionality was also introduced for modulus and concatenate string operators.

For more functions available in streaming data, see the TIBCO Streaming documentation.

Map charts now support zooming in/out as well as panning when Auto-Zoom is enabled.

Newly introduced capabilities for Business Authors now include the configuration of image layer transparency in Map charts, as well as the coloring of lines and borders for feature layers on Map charts.

The connector for SAP BW in Spotfire has been updated for the latest security libraries of SAP, including support for constrained Kerberos delegation in Spotfire web clients as well as Spotfire Analyst clients.

The connector for PostgreSQL in Spotfire now supports accessing data from Azure Database for PostgreSQL. This allows for users to optionally combine push- down queries with extraction of row- level data up front or on-demand.

The Salesforce connector in Spotfire has been updated to support more columns in a single view, making it possible to execute multiple requests and join results in Spotfire’s in-memory engine.

Users of TIBCO Spotfire® web clients can now visualize real-time streaming data sources in the same visual analytics environment as historical analyses.

This feature makes it easier to roll-out real-time business applications and dashboards to large user bases. A new demo file is now embedded in Spotfire® Analyst software to demonstrate streaming data using static data as reference.

When Spotfire users mark data points of interest, the Spotfire Recommendations engine now analyzes potential relationships between marked data and the broader datasets. Identifying the differences for deeper investigation, Spotfire analytics highlights these through best-practice visualizations for each specific relationship.

In Spotfire Analyst software, you can now configure alerts using the Spotfire Data Streams/TIBCO Streaming UI for visualizations based on real-time streaming data. With a simple right-click from within Spotfire analyses, users may now define and manage alerts, triggering actions such as sending of emails.

Spotfire software now uses georeferenced information to position image layers automatically rather than manually.

Additionally, adding image layers to a map chart allows for faster configuration of coordinate system (CRS) on full map visualizations.

With 50+ new analytical functions to the built-in Snowflake connector, Spotfire users leveraging the leading cloud data warehouse are now enabled to push more calculations into Snowflake. This reduces the need to extract row-level data from Snowflake into the Spotfire data engine.

Single sign-on (SSO) between Spotfire and Spotfire Data Streams software is now supported. This feature makes it easier to deploy streaming visual analytics dashboards and applications across large organizations.

The user now has the ability to inform the Spotfire solution not to calculate insights for selected columns of data. This aides in faster arrival at insight if data is redundant or otherwise irrelevant to a specific analysis.

Spotfire software now supports deployment on Windows Server 2019 as well as Oracle 19c as the Spotfire Server Database.

Creating TIBCO Spotfire® visualizations is now faster with enhanced Recommendations logic: automatic detection of several new non-additive categories, as well as more options for aggregating numeric columns. The Recommendations engine now uses that knowledge to make more informed suggestions for the initial state of visualizations, speeding the time-to-insight discovery.

Native Spotfire connectors for Cloudera Hive and Cloudera Impala now support the latest Cloudera CDH version. Available in all clients for on-premises and in TIBCO Cloud™ Spotfire® Analyst software.

A simplified workflow for data transformations: Add new data directly from the canvas graphical view using the canvas wire "plus sign" feature. Additionally, the canvas information pane now enables the user to copy to clipboard. Total row and column count details are also now available for each data source.

It's now possible to configure the Spotfire® Node Manager to run under non-administrative accounts. This feature distinguishes node manager operations from administrator operations on your machines. See this community article for access to the script and instructions.

With native Google BigQuery support, data scientists can now easily push interactive queries from Spotfire® software into BigQuery and visualize their largest datasets instantly without sacrificing speed or performance.

Native connectivity for self-service access to TIBCO ComputeDB™ in-memory database, which is based on Apache Spark™ and Geode™ software and optimized for analytics. Provides Spotfire users with modern query processing techniques for low-latency, interactive analytics on both stored and real-time streaming data.

TIBCO Cloud™ Spotfire® web clients now include support from TIBCO® Data Virtualization software, allowing web and mobile clients to load and refresh data. This offers unified views of disparate data sources and improved data federation capabilities.

With new, global-preference, on-demand storage, administrators have the option to let users begin a Spotfire session with empty on-demand data tables. Users will enjoy the ability to save and reuse analysis files with personal on-demand data tables or simply save storage space in the library.

Creating visualizations is now faster with the option of keyboard shortcuts: CTRL+1 creates a table, CTRL+2 creates a cross table. More shortcuts can be seen by simply hovering over the visualization type. Additionally, more time-saving features for quickly adding visualizations include the ability to search for chart types using the Find tool and simple keywords like "bar" or "line."

It's now possible to reload data directly from the toolbar in Spotfire web clients:

• In Business Author mode: refresh all linked and all stored data sources via the menu options Data > Reload Linked Data and Data > Reload All Data.
• In Consumer mode: for analysis files that have not been loaded by Scheduled Updates, refresh linked data sources via the menu option Data > Reload Linked Data.

A new "Open" choice in the Spotfire file menu lets you browse local files.

The C# API allows IronPython scripts or C# extensions that allow admins to access user name, domain, group/role membership, and other relevant information about users.

Spotfire Server software now automatically includes ODBC drivers for Apache Spark SQL, Apache Cassandra®, and MongoDB Server. As part of this release, these have all been updated to the latest versions for TIBCO Drivers 1.8.

The Spotfire user action log has now been extended to include many common visual analytics actions such as create visualization, filter, export, and others. This enables organizations to monitor usage more closely and further optimize investment in BI assets.