Visualizing data helps companies interpret and analyze massive amounts of data to help them make data-driven decisions. Visualization allows for understanding trends, outliers, and patterns that may not be as obvious in just a table format. Finding the best way to visualize data in Cassandra or DataStax may be time-consuming as there are many tools, commercial and open-source, but not all of them enable connections to Cassandra and/or DataStax. Here are some of the best tools to help users visualize their data in Cassandra or DataStax.
Knowi
Knowi natively integrates with Cassandra and DataStax for analytics and visualization. Also, Knowi is a certified Datastax Business Intelligence partner, but it also supports other NoSQL databases and other data sources. Knowi offers over 30 visualization options, and you can modify the type via the setting options. They also offer advanced query capabilities to embeddable dashboards and predictive analytics. Additionally, Knowi supports joins across multiple Cassandra tables and databases; as well as joins across other NoSQL and SQL data sources, giving the user a combined view of the data across the heterogeneous databases. An example visualization of data is available on the free trial playground.
Tableau
Tableau is a visualization tool that allows connections to Cassandra and DataStax. It offers common general types of data visualization like charts, tables, graphs, maps, infographics, and dashboards. They also offer more specific methods to visualize data such as area charts, dot distribution maps, Gantt charts, heat maps, histograms, and word clouds just to name a few. These visualizations can also be mix-and-matched in a combination in a dashboard. This software can connect to data in Cassandra using Simba’s Cassandra ODBC Driver, which can enable direct SQL query translation to Cassandra Query language. Also, tableau offers a 14-day free trial to see if it’s right for you. Here are a few examples of how data can be visualized and interpreted. Additionally, you can find more examples here.
Redash
Redash allows for connection and querying to data sources, building dashboards, visualizing data, and sharing them with others. It also allows users to visualize their results in various formats including chart, cohort, pivot table, boxplot, map, counter, Sankey, sunburst and word cloud. You can gather information from multiple sources and include them in thematic dashboards. Cassandra can be queried using its natural syntax and the schema can be explored easily in the cloud-based query editor. Slack integration allows the sharing of visualizations as well. Also, Redash offers a 30-day free trial, but they have 3 price points including starter, pro, and business. The price points are available here.
Apache Zeppelin
Apache Zeppelin is an open-source option for data ingestion, discovery, analytics, and visualization + collaboration. Currently, Apache Zeppelin supports many interpreters such as Apache Spark, Python, JDBC, Markdown and Shell. Apache Zeppelin already includes some basic chart types. Visualizations are not limited to SparkSQL query, as any output from any language backend can be recognized and visualized. In addition, the zeppelin URL can also be shared among collaborators and can be embedded as an iframe.
Cassandra.Link
Cassandra.Link is a knowledge base that we created for all things Apache Cassandra. Our goal with Cassandra.Link was to not only fill the gap of Planet Cassandra, but to bring the Cassandra community together. Feel free to reach out if you wish to collaborate with us on this project in any capacity.
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