Spaces
Spaces are secure, on-demand environments that bring together people, tools, data, and models to support safe collaboration and the development of data products and services. They are designed for teams working within and across organizations, enabling users to explore, analyze, and work with data in a governed, cloud-based workspace.
Spaces are purpose-built for collaborative work. Each participant in a Space has access to their own isolated compute environment, and data can be shared securely with other users. Spaces can also run tasks in the background, enabling automation and continuous data processing.
Users can access data products and assets in multiple ways, depending on their permissions and the configuration of the Space. These include:
Connecting through a database interface
Accessing files directly
Using predefined platform connectors
Access is governed by product subscriptions and asset-level usage permissions, ensuring that each user can only view or export the data they are authorized to use. Supported database environments include:
Asset Database: Contains the data from assets that the user is authorized to access.
Collaborative Database: Allows users within a Space to securely share and work on data together.
Publish Database: Used to create static data assets, which can be turned into new data products
Information on how to create and activate a Space can be found here.
Spaces Types
The type of Space experience is determined by the level of data access permissions granted to the user:
Workbench (VDI-less)
Workbench is the default experience for users who have full permissions to access and export all the products and assets in a Space.
Users can download data and access the internet directly from within the Space.
Tools can be launched directly from the Space page without requiring additional applications or secure environments.
This experience provides fast, flexible access to data and tools.
Activation time: Typically between 6 and 20 minutes, depending on resource availability.
Sandbox (VDI)
The Sandbox experience is used when a user has limited or view-only permissions to some of the products or assets in a Space. It is designed to protect data from unauthorized access or export.
Users must work within a secure desktop environment, such as AWS Workspaces or Itopia, depending on the cloud provider.
Before accessing the data, the secure desktop must be set up, which may take approximately 20 minutes.
Once the secure desktop is available, users log in to the secure environment and then access the Harbr platform from within it.
Although this experience involves additional steps, it is essential in ensuring data security and compliance in sensitive data contexts.
Spaces Tools
Every Space includes a suite of preconfigured tools that support data access, transformation, analysis, and visualization. Users can write and run code in SQL, Python, or R, with tools selected and configured based on the type of Space.
The following tools are commonly available:
Tool | Description |
|---|---|
Superset | A lightweight, user-friendly dashboarding tool that allows users to create and share data visualizations. |
RStudio | An integrated development environment for the R language, with support for SparkR and Sparklyr for big data access. |
Trino | A distributed SQL query engine that enables fast exploration of large datasets, including both local and remote data. |
Apache Spark | A powerful, in-memory compute engine that supports scalable analytics using Python, R, and SQL. |
Apache Hive | A data warehouse solution that supports SQL-based queries on large datasets. |
Apache Zeppelin | A web-based notebook for interactive analytics across multiple programming languages. |
HUE | A browser-based SQL development environment using HiveQL, a variant of SQL optimized for big data. |
Jupyter + Anaconda | A Python development environment with support for browser-based notebooks, data visualization, and PySpark integration. |
The availability of these tools depends on the Space type configuration set by the Platform Operators.
Activate Tools
Activate your on-platform tools and compute to analyze your products and/or assets by activating a session of your pre-defined Space specification. You can have one active Space session at a time.
Click on the Spaces App.
Select the Space Specification you would like to activate and click the blue Activate button on the right hand side
As the tools become active they change from grey to color and change from Waiting to Launch. You are shown the estimated time for the Space to activate, which is usually about 5 mins. If it is longer, then have a stretch and come back later.
Click on the tool you would like to use for your analysis once it becomes active.
Enter any required login credentials to use the tool.
Now you can explore the contents of your data products using the selected tool