Adding a Spotfire Connection

Prerequisites

• A user with sufficient permissions is required to establish a connection with Spotfire.
• Zeenea traffic flows towards the server must be open.

note

A configuration template can be downloaded here: tibco-spotfire.conf

Supported Versions

The Spotfire connector was developed and tested with Spotfire Server version 11.6.0.

Installing the Plugin

The Spotfire plugin can be downloaded here: Zeenea Connector Downloads.

For more information on how to install a plugin, please refer to the following article: Installing and Configuring Connectors as a Plugin.

Declaring the Connection

Creating and configuring connectors is done through a dedicated configuration file located in the /connections folder of the relevant scanner.

Read more: Managing Connections

In order to establish a connection with a Spotfire Server instance, specifying the following parameters in the dedicated file is required:

Parameter	Expected value
name	The name that will be displayed to catalog users for this connection.
code	The unique identifier of the connection on the Zeenea platform. Once registered on the platform, this code must not be modified or the connection will be considered as new and the old one removed from the scanner.
connector_id	The type of connector to be used for the connection. Here, the value must be tibco-spotfire and this value must not be modified.
connection.strategy	Spotfire connector strategy webservice: SOAP integration mode database: JDBC integration mode Default value: webservice
connection.url	Webservice strategy: Server address (example: https://spotfire.prod.client.ec2) Database strategy: Database JDBC URL (example: jdbc:postgresql://server:5432/spotfire_server)
connection.oauth.client_id	Webservice strategy only. OAuth2 client ID
connection.oauth.client_secret	Webservice strategy only. OAuth2 client secret
connection.auth_with_session	Webservice strategy only. Optional. Default value false. Set to true to use user session to download the dxp file.
connection.username	Webservice strategy: Optional Session user to download the dxp file. Database strategy: JDBC username
connection.password	Webservice strategy: Optional Session user password to download the dxp file. Database strategy: JDBC user password
connection.jdbc_driver_name	Database strategy only JDBC driver name (example: org.postgresql.Driver)
tls.truststore.path	The Trust Store file path. This file must be provided in case TLS encryption is activated (protocol https) and when certificates of Spotfire servers are delivered by a specific authority. It must contain the certification chain.
tls.truststore.password	Password of the trust store file
tls.truststore.type	Type of the trust store file (PKCS12 or JKS). Default value is discovered from the file extension.

note

A template of the configuration file is available in this repository.

User Permissions

In order to collect metadata, the running user's permissions must allow them to access and read Spotfire analytics that need cataloging.

If the connector's strategy is set to webservice, the user must have sufficient rights to call the library-services web service. The client must have the following rights:

export CONFIG_TOOL_PASSWORD=""
scope=-Sapi.soap.library-service
./config.sh register-api-client --tool-password="${CONFIG_TOOL_PASSWORD}" --name=zeenea-scanner $scope --client-profile=other -Gclient_credentials

If connector's strategy is set to database, configured user must have read access to the following Spotfire tables in associated database:

• lib_data
• lib_items
• lib_item_types
• lib_resolved_depend
• lib_properties
• users

Data Extraction

To extract information, the connector runs requests on the Web Services API. During the inventory, the connector collects the list of Spotfire Analysis reachable by the configured client. If connector's strategy is set to database, inventory will be made through data retrieved from Spotfire internal database. During the import of the selected Analysis, the connector gets the .dxp file of the Analysis and identifies datasets it contains. The metadata are sent to the catalog.

Collected Metadata

Inventory

Will collect the list of visualizations accessible by the user.

Lineage

The Spotfire connector is able to retrieve the lineage between datasets that have been imported to the catalog. Datasets from other connections must have been previously imported to the catalog to be linked to the Spotfire dataset through a new data process object. This feature is available for the following systems and, for it to work, an additional parameter is needed in the source system connection as configured in the Spotfire server.

Source System	Possible value of alias parameter to be assigned in the source system configuration file
AWS Redshift	host:port/db
Tibco Data Virtualization	IP

note

The connector creates a data process object for each dataset from Spotfire to represent the link with the source dataset even if the source dataset is not present in the catalog.

Visualization

A Visualization is a Spotfire Analysis.

• Name
• Source Description
• Technical Data:
  • Path
  • Parent Id
  • Created By Domain Name
  • Modified By Domain Name
  • Creation Date
  • Modification Date
  • Page Count
  • Visualization Count
  • Table Count
  • Column Count
  • Embed All Source Data
  • Size
  • Total Table Load Time

Dataset

A dataset is a data set used in a Spotfire Analysis.

• Name
• Source Description: Description not retrieved

Fields

Dataset field.

• Name
• Source Description: Description not retrieved
• Type
• Can be null: Not supported. Default value false.
• Multivalued: Not supported. Default value false.
• Primary Key: Not supported. Default value false.
• Technical Data:
  • Technical Name
  • Native type: field native type

Data Process

To represent the data flow from an external source. One Data Process will be created for each Spotfire Dataset.

• Name: import input/output_dataset name

Object Identification Keys

An identification key is associated with each object in the catalog. In the case of the object being created by a connector, the connector builds it.

Read more: Identification Keys

Object	Identification Key	Description
Visualization	code/path/analysis name	code: Unique identifier of the connection noted in the configuration file path: Spotfire path to the analysis analysis name
Dataset	code/dataset/path/analysis name/dataset name	code: Unique identifier of the connection noted in the configuration file path: Spotfire path to the analysis analysis name dataset name
Field	code/dataset/path/analysis name/dataset name/field name	code: Unique identifier of the connection noted in the configuration file path: Spotfire path to the analysis analysis name dataset name field name
Data Process	code/dataprocess/path/analysis name/dataset name	code: Unique identifier of the connection noted in the configuration file path: Spotfire path to the analysis analysis name dataset name