AWS QuickSight

BI service to build visualizations, perform ad-hoc analysis, and get business insights from data

Usage pattern

• Ad-hoc exploration/visualization
• Dashboard and KPIs
• Analyze and visualize data coming from logs and stored in S3
• Analyze and visualize data in SaaS applications like Salesforce

Cost

• Standard $9/user/month; Enterprise $18/user/month
• SPICE capacity: $.25/GB/month Standard; $.38/GB/month Enterprise

Performance

• SPICE uses a combination of columnar storage and in-memory technologies
• Machine code generation to run interactive queries on large datasets at low latency

Durability and availability

• SPICE automatically replicates data for high availability
• Scale to hundreds of thousands of users
• Simulataneous analytics across AWS data sources

Scalability and elasticity

• Fully managed service, scale to terabytes of data

Interfaces

• RDS, Aurora, Redshift and Redshift Spectrum, Athena, S3 and S3 Analytics, Apache Spark, IoT Analytics, Presto
• SaaS, applications such as Salesforce

Anti-patterns

• Highly formatted canned Reports, better for ad hoc query, analysis and visualization of data
• ETL, Glue better choice

QuickSight Capabilities and operational characterics

Build visualizations, perform ad-hoc analysis, and quickly get business insights from your data

Data Source Types

Use many sources for data analysis, including files, AWS services, and on-premises databases

• Athena, Aurora, Redshift and Redshift Spectrum, S3 and S3 Analytics, Apache Spark, IoT Analytics, RDS, Presto
• Use other data sources by linking or importing them through supported data sources
• Redshift clusters, Athena databases, and RDS instances must be in AWS
• Other data sources must be in one of the following
  • EC2
  • on-prem databases
  • file systems
• Supported file types: CSV and TSV, ELF and CLF, JSON, XLSX

SPICE

Super-fast, Parallel, In-memory Calculation Engine (SPICE): engineered to rapidly perform advanced calculations and serve data; in the Enterprise edition data in SPICE is encrypted at rest

• SPICE capacity allocated separately per AWS region
• Can release unused SPICE capacity

Analysis

• Use analysis to create and interact with visuals and stories, a container for a set of related visuals and stories
• Use multiple data sets in an analysis, but any given visual can only use one data set
• Share an analysis with other users by emailing them a link; can only share analysis with other users in your QuickSight account
• Use calculated fields to transform your data
  • Many functions, such as extract, formatDate, etc.
  • Aggregate functions

Visuals

• Graphical representation of a data set using a diagram, chart, graph, or table
• Supports up to 30 datasets in a single analysis, and up to 30 visuals in a single sheet, and a limit of 20 sheets per analysis

ML Insights

• ML insights use machine learning to uncover hidden insights and trends in your data, identify key drivers, and forecast business metrics
• Use the insights generated by ML insights in NLP narratives within dashboards

Sheets

• Set of visuals that are viewed together in a single page

Stories

• Use a story to play multiple iterations of an analysis sequentially to provide a narrative about the analysis data
• On September 30, 2020, AWS permanently removed all existing stories from QuickSight
• AWS suggests that you recreate stories as visuals that are side-by-side in an analysis as an alternative

Dashboards

• Read-only snapshot of an analysis that you can share with other users for reporting
• Preserves the configuration of the analysis at the time of publishing, including filtering, parameters, controls, and sort order
• When a user views the dashboard, it reflects the current data in the data sets used by the analysis
• With the enterprise edition a shared dashboard can also be embedded in a website or app
• Drill up/down into data points