Ways to consume data

This article focuses on data consumption tools—the final step in your data discovery journey. Once you’ve found the right asset, it’s time to put the data to work. The available options vary depending on the asset type.

Data publishers can create custom views—charts, maps, tables, or key figures—that provide immediate insights into a dataset. Custom views can highlight important patterns and make complex data easier to understand.

When available, custom views can be opened through Show views, either from the asset page or from within Explore data.

Publishers may also use the dataset in visualization assets or other data-driven projects. You may find these in the catalog or among the related assets shown on the dataset’s asset page.

Sometimes you just want to explore a dataset and see for yourself if it contains the information you need.

Use the Explore data feature to filter the dataset and create a visualization suited to the question you want to answer. You can consult the dataset schema to identify the available fields, configure a chart, and share your analysis through its URL.

If Huwy is available on your workspace, you can use it to discover datasets, understand what they contain, and ask analytical questions using natural language.

Huwy is particularly useful when you do not know which asset contains the information you need, if need help understanding a dataset’s structure or fields, or if you want to refine a question as you go.

Remember that Huwy may misunderstand a request or make mistakes. Treat its answers as a starting point for exploration rather than a definitive conclusion.

Need to take the data out of the portal? You can download a dataset in multiple formats, such as CSV.

If you want to connect data to external apps—say, to build a map of hospitals in your own application—you can use the API console to generate a request URL. An application or script can use this URL to retrieve the data programmatically.

Some assets come from external platforms. In this case, the portal redirects you to the original source—for example, a Power BI dashboard.

Snowflake assets are an exception: you can explore their data directly through Explore data, just like a Huwise dataset.

To decide how consumers should explore or visualize your data, see Choosing how to present and visualize data.

Then define your conversion objective and configure your asset page accordingly: emphasize the relevant action, provide the metadata users need, adjust visibility, and configure access where necessary. For datasets, use data usage analytics to monitor consumption and identify what to improve.