In the past two weeks, we have discussed concepts of D3.js and also worked on a couple of visualizations. There was one thought that was continuously present in my mind – we can create these visualizations using Tableau in seconds. This is too much work.
SO WHY ARE WE EVEN USING D3.js? That is when I decided to do some research. D3.js is time consuming but provides some really cool features.
- Easy Integration with web – Data visualizations created with D3.js work on web. We can interact with any part of the DOM giving it the flexibility to accordingly change. (Eg – https://bost.ocks.org/mike/uberdata/)
- User Interface Features – D3.js can be used with applications to create advanced user interfaces with charts, analytics etc. directly built into them. It not only gives flexibility to the developers but also provides them with a huge list of libraries that can be reused to create visualizations.
- Customization – What to do when you need to create visualizations that are not available with prepacked solutions? D3.js allows you to be as creative as you want to be and create visualizations that you want to use and that represents your data best.
- I don’t want to share my data – Use D3.js. It is best to create visualizations for clients that are external to the company and want to interact with specific information, using D3.js. You can control what they can see and how much they can interact with a visualization.
- Interactive Visualization Online – With D3.js, you can create visualizations that deal with smooth data transitions without having to refresh views, clicking multiple buttons etc. With D3.js we can transition from one data view to another and with so much ease – D3 Show Reel Demonstration . The data is parsed easily making it interactive and meaningful.
- Community Support – D3.js boasts of a very strong open source community support to help people when they are stuck as well as learning resources.
Source – https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-you-may-want-consider-powerful-open-source-d3js-data-guerino
– http://www.scribblelive.com/blog/2013/01/29/why-d3-js-is-so-great-for-data-visualization/
Great and informative post Roli. This was exactly what I wanted to read about myself. I would like to add that it is possible to integrate a custom visualization done using D3.js with a Tableau workbook in two ways. One is using Tableau API and hosting the Tableau dashboard on a webpage that uses D3 for interactivity. Another is to use a D3 URL link to be displayed on a Tableau dashboard.
A good motivation to learn and use D3.js, though there are several quick tools available. D3.js is tedious and time consuming but the best part is it does not offer a set of predefined visualization forms that limit creativity.