I tried Lumira Personal Edition which is free and i tried to do simple bar chart, geo chart (including Estonian) and thus covered some of the functionality
Data connection and metadata
I tried the same data source (Excel 168 000 rows) as I used with TableauI was smiling and happy to work, but unfortunately i got error "Data acquisition has failed (HDB 00101)". I tried hiding some fields, but still got this error and even googled but didn't find any relevant information. Eventually after removing some fields I was ready to go forward. Little bit it remined me Business Objects and all error descriptions - often they didn't tell very precisely what is wrong
I was happy that the user interface seemed friendly and not overwhelmed .
There is the same panels like Tableau Measures and Dimensions. Good!
One thing I noticed, that the time hierarchy must be created by yourself, it is not automatically there. And when you create it by yourself, then its four stage. Tableau has many more stages and automatic hierarchy Of course you can change data type but and a little bit format, but that's all. You cannot define like automatic colors, sorting and so on. This means every time more time to do that on every visualizationCharts
When Tableau made this understanding chart, then Lumira cannot handle this and as there are now scroll-bars, it is all not meaningful at all
Adding top values (didn't find though how user can change this) and then this picture makes sense
Didn't find any easy place to create custom hierarchies
Funny thing was this, that I couldn't to any Undo? Maybe it was in my computer, but it really is disadvantage, when developing my analysis
Wanted to calculate difference in minutes and found that there are really small capability of functions and no Datediff function to calculate difference in minutes
Didn't see also any trendline and forecasting options
You cannot choose area with your mouse and select only data interesting to you, you cannot see underlying data, you cannot edit data, etc. You cannot change colors on every graph on desktop edition and specify that with Red value use Red color and etc.
You can merge data from different sources and it seems quite fast and there are storyboards like in Tableau
On dashboard you have ability to add visualizations and filters. Didn't find the ability to click on chart and filter - but I guess this must be available and I didn't just find it ?
Didn't also find the ability to change tooltips?
Geospatial analysis
Lumira makes own suggestions which data might be geographic (just like Tableau) and you can define yourselfIt shows which data is not connected, but couldn't find that I can myself define or edit data so that all data would be connected
You can use names to link data to maps or give longitude and latitude for Lumira
Geo chart was ok, but couldn't add more functionality to it, like different colors, edit bubble sizes
Also graphics was not so advanced - very square like
Conclusion
Lumira is ok, you can build visualizations and do some analysis. But functionality is not so great when compared with Tableau and seems limited in many areas. I think they have done a good start to move forward on offering visual analysis tool, but there is a long way to go ahead.
I think when using Lumira on everyday bases, then you'll find some other ways to overcome these limits
If you are active user and you have comments, please be free to share them :)
I think when using Lumira on everyday bases, then you'll find some other ways to overcome these limits
If you are active user and you have comments, please be free to share them :)