Spotlight: Re:dash (redash.io)

An Open Source Platform To Make Your Company Data Driven

Posted by Thomas Barthelemy on May 2, 2016

On today’s Spotlight we have redash.io, which is the type of tool you discover and then wonder why nobody thought of that.

redash dashboard

Introduction

The idea behind re:dash is to integrate with an existing database and provide an in-browser query editor and create great interactive visualization on the result.

It’s offered either as a SaaS (starting at $29/Month) or on-premise (Free / Open Source)

Setup

Setting up Re:dash is fairly easy and there is a few possibilities, here is how I deployed it on-premise following the Quick Start Guide using docker-compose:

  1. Getting the source: git clone https://github.com/getredash/redash.git
  2. Update docker-compose-example.yml for containers config if needed (default exposed port…)
  3. Rename docker-compose-example.yml to docker-compose.yml
  4. Starting only the DB: docker-compose up -d postgres
  5. Creating the DB Schema: ./setup/docker/create_database.sh
  6. Running all containers: docker-compose up -d

you can then stop/start the whole stack using docker-compose start and docker-compose stop

The first time you can login using the user/password admin/admin, consider changing it as soon as possible.

Other deploy options include:

  • AWS AMI
  • Google Compute Engine Image
  • Self install script
  • Bitnami installer

Overall it’s was pretty quick and worked as expected, kudos for that!

Awesome Features

  • Sharing Queries between developers for optimization and advices
  • Creating in a minute some great interactive data visualization (table/charts/map…)
  • Exporting Data Result as CSV / Excel
  • User Rights management for letting people only view/export data
  • One-click Embeddable visualization (iframe)
  • The amount of DB supported (18 on the list so far)

Limitations

  • Although it seems to be a very important part, the collaboration on query and visualization is quite limited to being able to read/write it.
  • It would be cool to see more features for query optimization, I could see myself collaborating with a few other people on a major query to fine-tune it, having extended report on the query runtime.
  • A little more support to label chart easily without having to actually have to modify the query to give data the right label.
  • Some settings/parameters for embedding visualization, to show/hide some options

Conclusion

Re:dash is a very well thought platform getting you the sweet visualization in < 10min, and it’s open source. It definitely has some rough edge here and there but repository is very active and contributors are self-conscious on the current limitations, working hard to improve it.

Bottom-line: Seriously, give redash.io a try!

Posted with : Spotlight

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