F.A.Q

How it compares to Voila / Dash / Shiny

Voila, Dash and Shiny are great tools thats allow users to create dashboards based on Python and R code, they are served by and connected to a running Python or R process, this allows for birectional communication between the frontend and the backend and results in very dynamic dashboards.

This is great if you data changes constanty, are connecting to external data sources or APIs, or have complex logic in your dashboards. The annoying part comes when you try to deploy any built assets because it requires to have a running Python or R process. There are tons of solutions out there to make this process easier but the requirements of a handling Python/R dependencies and a running process are always there everytime you want to update or deploy an app.

We believe most dashboard and reports do not need a live Python or R process. Most reports only need to be updated when the underlying data is updated. Most of those are only going to be generated once!

Some of those reports could use some interactivity based on Widgets that make that the user experience better. That's where illusionist comes in.