axis names

The Danger of Hiding Data in Spotfire

by Julie Sebby
October 5, 2021October 5, 2021
Errors & Troubleshooting, Spotfire
1 Comment

Occasionally, I have a really hard time coming up with a good title for a post. This is one of those circumstances. But what I’m going to show you here is important if you want to sharpen your troubleshooting skills. A user reached out to me this week for help with a calculation on a cross table. It seemed like Spotfire was calculating inconsistently, but software doesn’t work that way. So, we had to be missing something. Would you have figured this out? How quickly would you have solved this puzzle? Can you find data hiding in Spotfire? Read on to learn more.

Why Do Counts Aggregate Differently in Spotfire?

by Julie Sebby
November 23, 2020December 10, 2020
Learning the Spotfire Expression Language, Spotfire, Visualizations

Last week, I wrote a post on using Axis Names on Cross Tables. My examples calculated the difference in Amounts between two scenarios on a cross table. I also needed to know the difference in well counts between scenarios, this time on a bar chart. But, when I changed the aggregation from a Sum to a CountDistinct, the calculations didn’t work anymore. That is because counts aggregate differently than the other aggregation methods. Read on if you want to get your counts right!

by Julie Sebby
November 17, 2020November 17, 2020
Learning the Spotfire Expression Language, Series, Spotfire
2 Comments

Okay, after a long hiatus, I’m restarting the series on learning axis names in all of the Spotfire visualizations. I’ll pick up where I left off with axis names on cross tables.

Calculate the Last Value on a Visualization

by Julie Sebby
September 1, 2020September 1, 2020
Errors & Troubleshooting, Spotfire

Spotfire’s label functionality leaves a lot to be desired. You can turn on all labels, which will probably clutter the chart since you can’t move labels on most charts. Or, you can mark data points to see select labels. None of this is helpful if you want specific labels on an exported report, which is where I found myself last week. To get around Spotfire limitations and still fulfill my customer requirements, I opted to add a text area with a calculated value above my visualization. This allowed me to calculate the last value from a visualization without dealing with labels. My calculation was cumulative, so I expected that if I used the same calculation, the end result would be the last value on my visualization. It was not. Even TIBCO support was stumped as to why this didn’t work. Read on to learn a little bit more about calculated values and the Spotfire expression language.

Spotfire Axis Names on Line Charts

by Julie Sebby
July 16, 2020July 16, 2020
Learning the Spotfire Expression Language, Series, Spotfire
4 Comments

If you’ve been following along, you know that my series on learning the Spotfire expression language is something of a long haul. It turns out that explaining Axis Names is a long and detailed affair. I am committed to it, and so this week I’m going thru axis names for line charts. If you missed it, check out Axis Names on Bar Charts.

Spotfire Axis Names on Bar Charts

by Julie Sebby
June 3, 2020June 3, 2020
Learning the Spotfire Expression Language, Series, Spotfire, Visualizations
8 Comments

Last week, I introduced the concept of Axis Names. If I counted correctly, there are 19 axis names applicable to one or more of the 14 visualizations in Spotfire. I will go through the axis names one visualization at a time, beginning with axis names on bar charts. Although, I learned very quickly that just because you can use an axis name on a given visualization, it doesn’t mean you should. I’ll show you what I mean by looking at Axis.X and Axis.Color. Read on to learn more.

What are Spotfire Axis Names?

by Julie Sebby
May 28, 2020May 28, 2020
Learning the Spotfire Expression Language, Series, Spotfire
8 Comments

A few months ago I started a series on Learning the Spotfire expression language. I covered the basics of calculations, keywords, node navigation, and a… Read More »What are Spotfire Axis Names?

Master NavigatePeriod Node Navigation

by Julie Sebby
February 17, 2020May 28, 2020
Learning the Spotfire Expression Language, Series, Spotfire
5 Comments

This post will wrap up a lengthy discussion of Spotfire’s node navigation methods by explaining how to use NavigatePeriod. Now, you might have noticed, node… Read More »Master NavigatePeriod Node Navigation

Node Navigation – Parent & ParallelPeriod

by Julie Sebby
January 20, 2020May 28, 2020
Learning the Spotfire Expression Language, Series, Spotfire
1 Comment

This is post 9 in my series on how to learn the Spotfire expression language. It explains the Parent and ParallelPeriod node navigation methods. Originally, I included NavigatePeriod, but NavigatePeriod deserves its own post, so it will follow next week. Read on to learn about Parent and ParallelPeriod node navigation methods.

by Julie Sebby
January 13, 2020May 28, 2020
Learning the Spotfire Expression Language, Series, Spotfire
3 Comments

This is post 8 in my series on learning the Spotfire expression language. We are in the middle of exploring all of the node navigation methods. This post will cover FirstNode, LastNode, LastPeriods, PreviousPeriod and NextPeriod. I’m combining these particular methods in order to differentiate between Node, Period, and Periods. Read on to learn the difference.