Hacker News Reader

Comment by antigen8 | Hacker News Reader

oneJob,

I can't thank you enough for the depth and thoughtfulness of your response- you're 100% right about looking for a SaaS solution, about finding one that is aligned with our mission. I've been experimenting with Tableau for the last two days and it strikes the perfect balance of incredible power and usability.

From what I can tell, Socrata is focused on open data and sharing data with outside organizations. Their product is what we're looking for, their mission is spot on with ours, but our data has to remain secure and private. We need a socrata for internal use.

I've shared your thoughts with my administrators, thanks again

View on HN

May I suggest you to have a look at OpenDataSoft? This is a SaaS solution which lets you publish data both externally AND internally with fine grained access control. It has advanced data processing and data visualization capabilities. Feel free to get in touch If you would like to give it a try.

http://www.opendatasoft.com

Disclaimer: I work for OpenDataSoft.

Thanks for mentioning this, I'll definitely check it out

Hello antigen8, I wanted to clarify my reasoning for including Socrata in that list of software suggestionss. All-in-one solutions often don't address and sometimes actually create a coupling of your data and the applications you utilize to access it or create value from it.

Your initial post mentioned a data store. And we've talked about Tableau. A data store, data warehouse, or database will usually be separate from the applications making use of the data. Analytics software, such as Tableau, makes use of the data source, but is not necessarily meant to be your data source. (http://www.tableau.com/solutions/data-sources and http://www.tableau.com/solutions/environments)

One solution to this problem is to go with an "API-First" architecture pattern. (https://www.leaseweblabs.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/api_...)

The API-First pattern creates an abstraction layer between your application and data source. You can then make changes to your data source (say, switch from MS Access to MS SQL Server, or go from using a collection of Excel files to a single Oracle database) without requiring any changes to your applications. Or, conversely, you could switch out, add to, or remove some of your applications (say, switch from Tableau to Pentaho) without having to touch your data sources. http://onlinehelp.tableau.com/v8.0/pro/online/en-us/extracti... http://www.tableau.com/new-features/data-engine-api-0 http://open-source.socrata.com/architecture/

So really Socrata is a super user friendly API solution, which your school can use completely privately and securely in-house, in conjunction with your data sources and applications. The CEO of Socrata actually speaks directly to this use-case here: https://www.quora.com/Are-there-any-products-like-Socrata-bu...

One scenario would be using PostgreSQL (to store your data) + Socrata (API layer) + Pentaho (analytics, visuals, and reporting). Then, if you don't like Pentaho, you can switch it out for Tableau without having to touch PostgreSQL. Or, if you decide you don't enjoy managing your PostgreSQL instance, you can switch to Google Cloud SQL (https://cloud.google.com/sql/docs/introduction).

Just want to say that I have zero affiliation with any of these companies, and that I'm sure there are other products out there that would accomplish the same solution, architecture wise.

Another link that may help decide if this solution might be worth looking into more: http://customer-summit.socrata.com/sessions/added-value-open...

And, since I mentioned it above, you might want to look at http://www.pentaho.com/.

Regardless, I'd spend some time on this site before making any decisions.http://apievangelist.com/. And glance through this book: http://htchttp.s3.amazonaws.com/books/apis_a_strategy_guide....

Reply on news.ycombinator.com