a) try to plot their data alone and spend time on hacking the stuff together. This takes time as the guys doing it aren't accustomed doing it daily. This happens accross all kind of divisions.
b) ask another team (with data scientists) for their support. Maybe the engineer has to write a ticket, or the person who should be doing it has other tasks, is in vacation, not willing, not replying to the request etc.
Either way hours are easily spent on solving this seemingly simple task. The amount of time spent is simply staggering.
Unix would also be my personal choice. But getting the right to put a unix machine into the network for a single user is extremely difficult. Windows, Internet Explorer and temporary admin rights are the work environment that almost everyone has to use.
That's why I think a web based solutions is the only viable option.
Speaking for an Engineer unfortunately often data is simple CSV. Parsing this data robustly and visualizing it without scripting is still something that hasn't been solved.
If you have any idea how to do it, I'd be more than glad to hear about it.
Working for a German Big four Car OEM.
We need the following for measurement data and we simply have no solution (except matlab, which is not good enough).
We want to plot big data (up to terabytes). Columns should be selectable by gui and nameable. The Data then should be be added to database with an ID. Everything should be usable without use of a scripting language.
Right now the terabytes of data have to be loaded in to ram just to see the first few lines and determine what the columns stand for. Now I know that there are editors that can load data partially but these have to be reinstalled which requires admin rights etc. This is a huge burden in a big company!
The process of simply plotting, selecting and storing data takes a huge amount of time. The solution should be web based because no admin rights are availabe.
Often I am impressed how many tools and hacks exist simply to get one thing done: visualize measurement data. Excel is not enough because even the import of dot vs comma vs tab etc takes too much time and everytime has to be relearned. Engineers have to plot the data sometimes every few months and then you have a new excel version that autocorrects measurement data to dates or whatever.
In my opinion this would solve an obscene amount of work.
Right now every engineer is hacking together some scripts that are extremely inflexible. When just csv-type data has to be handled.
Edit: this also applies to smaller amounts of data of megabytes. How can we plot them more robust than excel and then select x and y axis? I am pretty sure that we would love to buy a product that solves these issues.
a) try to plot their data alone and spend time on hacking the stuff together. This takes time as the guys doing it aren't accustomed doing it daily. This happens accross all kind of divisions.
b) ask another team (with data scientists) for their support. Maybe the engineer has to write a ticket, or the person who should be doing it has other tasks, is in vacation, not willing, not replying to the request etc.
Either way hours are easily spent on solving this seemingly simple task. The amount of time spent is simply staggering.
Unix would also be my personal choice. But getting the right to put a unix machine into the network for a single user is extremely difficult. Windows, Internet Explorer and temporary admin rights are the work environment that almost everyone has to use. That's why I think a web based solutions is the only viable option.