Recently, Dundas Data Visualization, Inc. announced Dundas BI 4, the latest version of its business intelligence (BI) and analytics platform. Dundas BI 4 boasts 100 new features, which focus on giving users “360 degree data control.” Data control refers to capabilities that enable users to edit, correct, and harness their data. With these capabilities, casual users gain independence from power users, who can use the extra time to focus on higher value tasks. 

Dundas’ focus on data control is unique. It is one of the few BI companies that offer the ability to edit data in real-time and see the changes reflected in visualizations. Ariel Pohoryles, Dundas’ Director of Product Marketing, agreed saying, “I do not see this [data control] as a new industry standard.” Pohoryles elaborated saying other companies are focused on automating processes, not adding data control capabilities.

New Features

Under the data control umbrella, there are four categories of new enhancements: smarter visualization features for business analysts, rapid development features for data analysts, extended integration features for administrators, and, the most significant of the four, data enrichment features for data consumers.

Data Enrichment For Data Consumers. The company made the most additions and enhancements to data enrichment, so data consumers can rely less on power users. “We wanted to provide a simple tool to modify data without depending on the technical user,” said Pohoryles. “With these data enrichment features, data consumers can turn into data producers.”

One of the data enrichment features, Data Correction, enables casual users to change data values in real time. Once data is changed, any visualization, dashboard, or model using that data also changes. This feature empowers users to do what-if analysis so they can change data values and see the impact on models.

Dundas also enhanced its Measuring Contextualization feature. In previous versions, users could add a contextual measure, but it would be static and the same across all elements. For example, the contextual measure for revenue by country could be a target revenue. Now, users can manually adjust each contextual value for each element. This makes it easy to set up states against the contextual value, so users can set up ‘good’ and ‘bad’ states compared to the target value.  

“Data enrichment is usually managed by IT,” said Pohoryles. “It is complex, expensive,and slow, but now casual users can do it themselves.”

Smarter Visualizations For Business Analysts. Among the smart visualization features are the visualization recommendation engine and auto-generated correlation table. The visualization recommendation engine automatically analyzes the data selected and picks the best visualization to represent that data, whether it be a bar chart, line graph, etc. It also recommends a number of next-best visualizations. This lets users spend less time determining the best visualization for their data.

The auto-generated correlation table determines the correlations between measurements in a color-coded table. Dark blue represents a perfect correlation and dark red represents an inverse correlation. Light blues and light reds represent a weaker positive or negative correlation, respectively. This feature helps users realize correlations they had not known before.

Rapid Development For Data Analysts. One of the new features is called re-wiring. If a user builds a source cube, say for products and product sales, that user can select a new data model, and Dundas BI will prompt the user to re-wire the source cube to the new fields available from a new data source. This and other development features help users adjust to the ever-changing needs of their businesses.

Extended Integration For Administrators. Report bursting is one of the new extended integration features. Before Dundas BI 4, users could schedule to distribute reports and dashboards, but each recipient would receive the exact same content. Now, it’s possible to individualize the content for each recipient. Also new is two connectors to HPE Vertica and Exasol databases. 

To see an in-depth video of what else is new in Dundas BI 4, click here. To see highlights, click here.