ACL™ publishes AN 12 and AX 6 with R, Python and Tableau integration plus expanded import
ACL™ heads into the fall with one of the biggest product updates to date.
Screenshot 1 – Fresh things coming out this fall
This applies to just about all software solutions — but with a special focus on analytics products ACL™ AN (desktop), ACL™ AX (client/server) and the ACL™ GRC suite.
Here is where you can find detailed release notes in your ACL™ Launchpad:
Here in brief are a few of the highlights: Data import possibilities are improved and very much extended, plus R and Python add powerful functionalities to the real core competence of data analytics. Turning to visualization — things have been happening here too, e.g. more ACL™ internal possibilities and the brand-new certified interface with Tableau.
1. Integration of R and Python
Google "R Python" and the first hits show you the importance these two languages have in the meantime taken on in data analytics.
Screenshot 2 - R and Python in data analyses context
Because of a broad basis of users, freely accessible methods and examples plus an extremely active community, data analytics are no longer imaginable without these languages. ACL™ has reacted with aplomb and shows the way to a whole world of application possibilities by simple integration of R and Python straight into ACL™ script language. In this way you can call up R code, and continue directly to use the return values, for example as a calculated field in ACL™. That means fully integrated best-of-both-worlds approaches, just right for users who until now worked both in parallel, and users who might want to look at the world beyond ACL™ (or R or Python).
2. Integration of Tableau (result visualization)
Through a certified Tableau interface you can now visualize results from ACL™ projects in Tableau by a direct ODBC tie.
Screenshot 3 – Now Tableau can be connected as well
ACL™ Analytics and ACL™ Analytics Exchange may offer good visualization through the web client, but without the same functionality as the Tableau tool specialized for visualization. Here too, as already said for R and Python, users already implementing both will profit from it, as well as users who want to gain an impression of what is possible.
3. Complete look at import possibilities
Many of our customers use SAP®, so in dab:Exporter they have the best interface on the market. But not only SAP®, a whole number of other data sources come into question for spanning data analytics. In other words you often face the challenge of extracting data from new, maybe less standardized systems, and importing them into ACL™. Here too, a lot has been happening: ACL™ now offers an entirely new ODBC import interface, an enormous improvement in design and usability over forerunner versions.
Screenshot 4 – Entirely new ODBC import interface
Through the generic interface ACL™ installs practically a whole set of different connectors along with it, meaning an end, finally, to manual searching for the right drivers or connections. In addition to cloud solutions like Salesforce, Hive, Google BigQuery or Amazon Redshift, you find it extremely simple to tie up with Microsoft SQL Server™ or Oracle.
Screenshot 5 – A couple of pre-defined ODBC sources are already implemented in ACL™
Plus, extra to the plug&play interface, experts can access an SQL mode to enable embedding of SQL import statements.
Our judgment
In ACL™ AN 12 and ACL™ AX 6 data analytics specialist ACL™ takes a big step forwards. Very worthy of mention, and appreciated too, is that ACL™ opens its solutions so that they are best embedded in a company. This shows both in the opening where data import is concerned — many new systems can be connected, and extremely simply too — as well as visualization (take the Tableau interface), and finally even in the focal field of ACL™, i.e. data analytics, now expandable for integration by R and Python.