Sisense fuses data analytics with tools including Python and SQL

Business intelligence firm Sisense sees a future in analytics and code-first functionality through tools including Python and Structured Query Language (SQL).

The company launched a new functionality within its Fusion Analytics platform update that enables data analysts to use such languages to conduct 'advanced analysis'.

According to Sisense chief product officer Ashley Kramer, "The market is full of tools that offer fragmented workflows and manual procedures, which compromise productivity, accuracy, and security and slow down the time-to-insight for anyone looking to make a data-driven decision at the organisation.

The company decided to take what it calls a 'code-first' approach to provide insights and scale decision-making, thus bringing analysts and users closer together.

Notebooks will enable data analysts to query data from any data source, visualise results in custom charts, and take their analytics efforts further using procedural code before visualisation. Notebooks also includes integrated workflows, source control, advanced security, allowing them to conduct ad hoc analysis on disparate datasets in SQL or Python – within one platform for in-depth analysis and BI that preserves data security and integrity.

Further, the company believes that Notebooks will fill the gap left by typical self-service solutions because it includes integrated custom analysis.

Features include integrated workflows, which enable model design to advanced analysis to visualisation to source control, with data security. Analysis using SQL or Python capabilities include SQL to charts, SQL to Python to charts, and SQL to R to charts, coming soon. Along with these features comes the best in class SQL and Code editor giving analysts the ability to perform continuous research.

Notebooks enables the orchestration of information with custom queries. Advanced operations such as window functions and common table expressions allow analysts to glean complex insights from datasets with high accuracy and precision.

Notebooks also enables exploration by allowing for collaboration during a developer's exploratory analysis before providing an answer or visualisation to a problem. In the future it will be able to share within the same product offering.

Arista Networks director of global ops, John Will, says, "The Sisense Notebooks product offering is a fresh, innovative idea that I haven't seen in other visualisation BI tools. It appears to be a very interesting enhancement to the existing Sisense portfolio of capabilities that we look forward to experimenting with - and learning more about.

The beta version of a Notebooks integration with Git is now available, however, the full integration will be ready in 2022.