Oracle Synopsis was first announced at Openworld 2016; a mobile platform to allow data analysis on the go on a mobile device. Think of it a bit like Oracle Data Visualizer Desktop for your phone or tablet. Up until now though it’s only been available for Android devices, however over the weekend the iOS version was released on the Apple Store.
So your first question might be Ok, so how much is it to licence?. Well – the answer to that would be £0; it’s FREE! Yes Free! You don’t need any back end OBIEE software or anything to run it either – it runs completely on your device. With that in mind I thought I should take a look.
The idea behind Synopsis is that you can take a spreadsheet from any existing App (email etc) and easily import that. So I took a spreadsheet of spend data from my local authority (.csv format), emailed it to myself and used the new option Import with Synopsis to load up the dataset.
Synopsis then proceeds to import the data file. My file was about 7MB which is a reasonable size for a .csv, however it only took a minute or two to import.
If your data file isn’t a .csv you can always change the options like this.
Once imported, Synopsis makes an attempt to produce a set of basic analytics, starting off with numeric measures it finds in the imported file. 
My file contained a Transaction Number which whilst numeric, is meaningless to perform calculations on. It’s quick and easy however to hide that.
From my intial high level measures I can then drill into some more detailed graphs and figures over various dimensions found in the file. Synopsis produces a mobile dashboard with mini analytics that also show the min/max values in the dataset. 
If I don’t like the look of any of these charts though I can easily go in and change that to a different view.
What’s more, I can also apply filters to each individual analytic. If I wanted to see all spend relating to Tower Wood organizations, that is as easy as:
Then a quick change of visualization type and we have something a lot more useful.
If I produce a visualization that I want to share with someone else, that is very easily done. We can share using all the usual sharing options.
I can even share the entire Synopsis project.
Up until now you might have noticed that all my numbers have been exactly that – numbers. So let’s tell Synopsis that Amount is in fact a Currency measure.
So there is a very quick run through of the Synopsis app. It’s still relatively basic at the moment, but I have to say I was impressed with how quickly it ran with a reasonably large dataset loaded in. Rendering is fast and in general the whole app is quite slick.
I’m sure in the coming months we’ll see more and more features added, probably some more advanced visualizations and I’m guessing additional developer drill options. Watch this space!