Spotfire Automation Services provides a platform and tools for automating TIBCO Spotfire without user interaction or even a visible user interface.
Automation Services can be used to send reports at scheduled intervals, to save a
snapshot of data embedded in a Spotfire document when certain events occur, and
in many other situations requireing an automated action based on a Spotfire document.
Tutorials
Terminology
| Task | An Automation Services Task is the building block for creating a complex job. Automation Services comes with a number of predefined tasks such as Apply Bookmark or Send Email, but since the platform is extendible additional tasks may be supplied by other vendors or your IT organization. |
| Job | An Automation Services Job is a collection of Tasks to be executed in a sequential manner. A job is stored in a Job File. |
| Job File | A Job File is a human-readable XML defining a job. |
| Job Builder | The Automation Services Job Builder is an application that runs within Spotfire Professional and provides an easy-to-use interface for creating and editing jobs. |
Automation Services Package Parts
The TIBCO Spotfire Automation Services distribution consists of the following parts:
- The installation package for installing the Automation Services Web Service.
Refer to TIBCO Spotfire
Automation Services System Requirements - v2.2 for details.
- The TIBCO Spotfire package (.spk) for deploying the Automation Services Job Builder.
- The SDK folder that contains reference assemblies, API documentation and a sample
C# project that includes the source code of all the tasks that ship in the product,
for instance the Send Email) mentioned above. Use the SDK to create custom
tasks.
- ClientJobSender: A tool that sends off a job to the Web Service for execution. Use
ClientJobSender for setting up scheduled or event-driven job execution.
Architecture
The Job is normally created in the Job Builder and saved as an XML Job File. This
file is then sent to the Automation Services Web Service for execution from the
Job Builder window (for testing), using the provided ClientJobSender tool, or by
your own tool. If you create your own tool you may find it useful to create a job
file template and modify the XML contents in runtime before sending it.
For each job in XML format sent to the Automation Services Web Service for execution,
a job executor process is started. This internal Job Executor logs on to a Spotfire
Analytics Server using credentials stored in the Spotfire.Dxp.Automation.Launcher.exe.config
file, executes the tasks one by one and then exits when a task fails or all tasks
have completed successfully.
The Automation Services Job File Format
The XML format of the Job File has been designed to be easy to understand and modify.
While there is no formal specification of the format, it is more or less self-explanatory.
The following job example opens an Analysis Document from the Analytics Server Library
and exports an image to a predefined location:
<as:Job xmlns:as="urn:tibco:spotfire.dxp.automation">
<as:Tasks>
<OpenAnalysisFromLibrary xmlns="urn:tibco:spotfire.dxp.automation.tasks">
<as:Title>Open Analysis from Library</as:Title>
<AnalysisPath>/Users/Username/Baseball stats</AnalysisPath>
</OpenAnalysisFromLibrary>
<ExportImage xmlns="urn:tibco:spotfire.dxp.automation.tasks">
<as:Title>Export Image</as:Title>
<VisualizationId>292a90c6-0e03-47fe-961e-a528a14e9735</VisualizationId>
<DestinationPath>C:\inetpub\wwwroot\MyWebServer\Image.png</DestinationPath>
<Width>640</Width>
<Height>480</Height>
</ExportImage>
</as:Tasks>
</as:Job>