Accessing data from supported data sources with connectors

Spotfire has native support for lots of data source types. You can connect to all supported data sources from the Connect to list in the Files and data flyout.

Technically, when you connect to a data source from the Connect to list, you are using a connector. Each connector is designed and optimized for one or more data sources. For the full list of supported data sources and the connectors you use to access data from them, see Supported data sources for data connections.

If your data source is available in the Connect to list, this is the preferred way to access your data. Connectors are well-suited for handling big data, because data can be kept external for in-database analysis. That means that queries are pushed to the data source from Spotfire as you work on the analysis. Of course, with connectors you can also import data into Spotfire or load the data on demand.

To get started and create your first connection to your data source, see Creating a data connection to access data from a database.

Connecting to other data sources

Even if Spotfire does not yet have native support for the type of external data source where you store your data, meaning there is no specifically designed and optimized data connector for that source, you can probably still load your data into Spotfire.

To connect to a data source for which there is no self-service data connector, you can use one of Spotfire's generic methods for connecting to external data sources.

Information Designer - Server-side JDBC connectivity

With Information Designer (Information Services), you can connect to and load data from JDBC-compliant data sources. Data can be imported for in-memory analysis in Spotfire.

Information Services is a server-side method for loading data, which means that JDBC drivers and JDBC data source templates that are required to connect to your data source must be installed and configured on your Spotfire Server.

Once these preparations are set up on the Spotfire Server, you use the Information Designer tool in the installed Spotfire client to create information links for loading data from your JDBC-compliant external data source.

Load data with ODBC, OLE DB, or ADO.NET data provider

If there is no native data connector that you can use to connect to your external data source, and you cannot use Information Services to connect with generic JDBC connectivity, you can use the generic support of Spotfire for loading data with a data source driver that you have installed on your computer.

With this method, you can use a driver of the types ODBC, OLE DB data provider, and ADO.NET data provider to connect and load data from an external data source.