Can I set up Visual Analytics so that a user can access large data sets without Data Preparation?

[BarryP]

Hi, 

I'm in the early stages of setting up our group to host Visual Analytics for our company, and am trying to figure out a few key steps before making some strategic decisions.

I have a data set that that is almost a terabyte in size that contains data for lab equipment in the field.  If I filter for a single piece of equipment, the resulting table is about 1 GB.  I can do this easily in Data Preparation using the "where" wizard.  We don't want our 3rd level support (for lab equpiment) to have access to Data Preparation.

Currently they do this with an Excell plugin that allows them to apply a filter before downloading the data.

Is there a way to do this in visual analytics?  Or will the data have to be prepared in Data Preparation to shrink it down to a manageable size before using Data Explorer?

Thanks!

[LinusH]

So you want to limit access to parts of the application rather than specific data, right?
And I take it that loading the whole TB is not an option?
And don't think there's an out of the box solution for this. But you could proaobly quite easy build a stored process that does this for you and your users. Just an idea, haven't done it myself...

[BarryP]

So the application has several permission levels.  

HERE

Pictured above is Data Explorer and Report Designer permissions (see the two buttons at the top?).  We want our users only to have Data Explorer.  From there can can select the data tables they want to look at, and then drag and drop different fields into the graph builders.  

A user may need to, for example, look at all of the urine tests on all of our instruments over the last 6 months.  That is probably about 0.5 GB of data, but it exists in a data set that is about 1 TB, which is way too big for the LASR server that we have set up.  

What we will likely do is have them make a formal request to me or someone who will work for me who has a third button and permission called Data Preparation.  From there we can filter out just the urine samples and then drop that file into the LASR server so that they can access it through Data Explorer.

So yes, I'm wondering if there's some way that I'm not yet aware of where they can do this themselves.  Like maybe there's a different way to get to the data.  

I'm also considering Web Report Studio as a way for them to grab stuff from these big data sets.