Exporting and importing visual artifacts

Cloudera Data Visualization allows you to export and import visual artifacts. This migration utility addresses various use cases. For example, in an enterprise environment, it is a common practice to develop and test applications in one environment before making them available in a client-facing production environment. You can also create back-ups of visual artifacts, or you can share your artifacts in various communities.

Cloudera Data Visualization provides an easy UI method to export visual artifacts (visuals, dashboards, and apps, plus their dependencies) by saving them to a .json format file. This file can be used to import the visual artifacts to a new system, where they can be deployed, if the new environment has identical data connections.

Visual artifacts do not store the actual raw data, or results of queries. They contain information about the layout and settings, the associated dataset, style customizations, and the query. When saving artifact information for export, Data Visualization also captures all these dependencies. For example, when you export a visual that uses a custom style, the export includes that custom style, as well as the dataset. As a result, when you import the visual into a new system, it looks exactly the same as it did at the source.

Manual export

You can export dashboards, linked visuals, or complete apps. The export generates a .json file and saves it into your download directory. It can then be shared, and imported into multiple systems.

For more information, see Exporting a visual, Exporting a dashboard, and Exporting an application.

Manual import

You can import visuals and dashboards, or complete apps, using the file generated by the export functionality. This .json file must be present on the client machine. When you import artifacts, Data Visualization recognizes if they have been previously imported. In such cases, you only update the existing artifact instead of creating a new one. This ensures that the artifacts are correctly synchronized between development and production platforms. Data Visualization verifies whether the artifacts already exist on the target system. By default, it examines all dashboards and visuals for a UUID match. Selecting the Disregard artifacts that exist in other workspaces option on import limits this search to the target workspace.

The necessary import privileges depend on the operation. These are some examples:
  • On initial import, you must have these privileges: Create datasets, Explore tables, Manage visuals and dashboards. If custom styles are part of the backup file, you also need also Manage custom styles.
  • If the import is only updating an existing dataset (everything else is already on the system), you only need the Manage dataset privilege.
  • If import is only updating visuals and dashboards, you need the Manage visuals and dashboards privilege. If custom styles are part of the backup file, you also need the Manage custom styles privilege.

For more information, see Importing a visual, Importing a dashboard, and Importing an application.

Migration with REST APIs

For scenarios where migrations are regularly occuring tasks, Data Visualization provides a set of REST APIs that can be used in scheduled scripts. This approach involves authentications with data API keys. For more information, see Migrating visual artifacts using REST APIs.