What happened to the Python step in Data Studio?

Clinton Jones
Clinton Jones Experian Elite
edited December 2023 in General

In Data Studio v1.1 there was a Python Step - what has happened to that and what are the options for using Python scripts with Data Studio now?

Best Answers

  • Tanj Jagpal
    Tanj Jagpal Administrator
    Answer ✓

    As you know, we pulled the Python capability a couple of releases back, due to the fact that it was in fact Jython and not the full Python capability. Jython does not include built-in libraries written in C as they will not work on the Java platform.
    Although most of the modules written in Python are included with the Jython distribution most Python code that doesn't use C extensions would likely work.

  • Henry Simms
    Henry Simms Administrator
    Answer ✓

    The challenge with running python scripts from Data Studio is that that a suitable JVM runner/parser for python doesn’t exist (we have previously integrated Jython but its lack of support for common libraries like pandas or SciPy made it unsuitable). Getting native python to run securely and performantly isn’t easy.

    As a interim solution we have a simple Custom Step implementation that executes a local (to the server) python script on file-based data from windows command line using Runtime.getRuntime().exec(String command). Please let me know if you want to try this step out.

    JavaScript has an engine for the JVM (we use Nashorn), and for R we use the external RServe server for processing, so these two script steps remain. You can find sample scripts in the \scripts folder of the installer root directory, but watch this space for more detailed tutorials on using these steps.

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