There are parts of an analysis and export that may always differ in the comparison. For example if the method DateTimeNow() is used in an expression, the files will differ because the time has changed between the exports. The following constraints may also be important to consider when using the qualification tools.
Statistical Methods
Some statistical methods can be calculated differently by different applications. This can lead to variances between the results of a calculation in Spotfire and other applications. For information on how the methods are calculated in Spotfire, please refer to the Spotfire Client User Guide.
Text Rendering
If text areas or table plots are exported as images, there will be a difference in the export if some systems have ClearType and some don't.
Image Rendering
In Spotfire versions 12.5.0 and later, you might notice that analyses look slightly different than the exports created with the Qualification export tool. The gold standard and the comparison export, however, will not show any differences in the Comparison Results.
This is because from version 12.5.0, Spotfire renders images using Skia by default, while the export tool in Qualification uses System.Drawing.
Image Size
Images are exported in a fixed (customizable) size and not the actual size on the screen. This is to avoid differences in the exports due to different screen resolutions or different sizes of the Spotfire window on different systems.
Rounding
Data tables with columns containing double values and complex calculations with very high precision can be exported differently due to the rounding effect in different processors.
3D Scatter Plot
The 3D Scatter Plot is not supported in Spotfire Qualification because the hardware acceleration needed is not supported in exports from Spotfire.
Locale and Regional Settings
If the different installations of Spotfire have different locale and regional settings, files in the comparison exports may differ from the files in the Gold Standard even though all of them are correct. This is due to the differences in date formats and thousands separators. If this is the case, it is recommended to have multiple file versions in the Gold Standard. For more information, see Merge Files in Gold Standard.
Operating System
In some cases there may be differences between exports from different operating systems. If this is the case, it is recommended to have multiple file versions in the Gold Standard. For more information, see Merge Files in Gold Standard.
Spotfire Versions
It is likely that exports from different versions of Spotfire differ since changes made in Spotfire can affect the appearance of visualizations.