Omni
Omni ships weekly, and almost every week the headline item is an AI feature.
Comparison · Analytics
filearray vs Holistics
A side-by-side editorial comparison of filearray and Holistics — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
filearray vs Holistics: at a glance
What is filearray?
The on-disk array layer under RAVE spends its releases hunting segfaults.
filearray stores large arrays on disk and reads them back with little memory overhead, serving as the storage substrate for the RAVE intracranial EEG stack. The 0.2.2 release fixes out-of-bound indexing that caused segfaults along certain margins and an ASAN-flagged signed integer overflow in the load path. The user-facing API has been stable since 0.1.6.
What is Holistics?
Holistics is adding governance to the AI layer it spent the summer building.
Holistics ships small, frequent notes - often one or two sentences - covering three strands at once: AI features in Explore and Chat, as-code control over presentation through AML, and workspace hygiene like file history and dark mode. The August entries turn to the AI layer's edges rather than its capabilities, with an AI user attribute for restricting what the assistant can reach. Several entries are barely a line long, so scope frequently has to be read from the headline.
filearray vs Holistics: editorial side-by-side
filearray
0.0ANALYTICS
The on-disk array layer under RAVE spends its releases hunting segfaults.
◆ Current state
filearray stores large arrays on disk and reads them back with little memory overhead, serving as the storage substrate for the RAVE intracranial EEG stack. The 0.2.2 release fixes out-of-bound indexing that caused segfaults along certain margins and an ASAN-flagged signed integer overflow in the load path. The user-facing API has been stable since 0.1.6.
◆ Where it's heading
This is infrastructure whose release history reads as a memory-safety log: unprotected C++ variables, buffer sizes exceeding array length, allocations one byte short, endianness on big-endian platforms, and now out-of-bound margins caught by sanitizers. The one sustained feature direction is reducing the cost of operating on arrays too large for memory — lazy operator evaluation through a proxy class, fmap-style application, and marginal collapse. Portability work has steadily removed hard requirements, dropping the C++11 declaration and swapping OpenMP for TinyThreads to get parallelism on macOS.
◆ Prediction
Expect continued sanitizer-driven patches rather than new interfaces; the three-year gap before 0.2.2 suggests releases now arrive only when a crash or a CRAN check demands one.
Holistics
5.0ANALYTICS
Holistics is adding governance to the AI layer it spent the summer building.
◆ Current state
Holistics ships small, frequent notes - often one or two sentences - covering three strands at once: AI features in Explore and Chat, as-code control over presentation through AML, and workspace hygiene like file history and dark mode. The August entries turn to the AI layer's edges rather than its capabilities, with an AI user attribute for restricting what the assistant can reach. Several entries are barely a line long, so scope frequently has to be read from the headline.
◆ Where it's heading
The AI work has moved through a recognizable sequence: capability first with chart suggestions, then observability with AI Chat Insights for admins, and now access control with an AI-specific user attribute. Alongside it, Holistics keeps pulling presentation into AML - custom charts, theme palettes, currency formats - so the things analysts used to click are versioned as code. File history is the join between the two threads, giving every dashboard, model, and dataset its own restorable timeline.
◆ Prediction
With capability, visibility, and access control now in place for the AI layer, the next step is likely audit or policy depth - logging what the assistant answered against which data - rather than new AI surfaces.
Alternatives to filearray and Holistics
Other Analytics products tracked by Sparkpulse, ranked by recent ship velocity. Each card links to a full editorial trajectory and lets you pivot into a head-to-head comparison with either filearray or Holistics.
silx
silx settles into maintenance a release after its PySide6 migration
Plotly
Plotly is turning its cloud into a metered compute platform with an enterprise on-ramp.
aniread
aniread stops asking you to know which tracker wrote the file
Rho
Rho's release machinery finally produced a stable build — and it shipped no new product.
Usermaven
Usermaven closed the loop: data comes in from anywhere, and now it goes back out.
See all filearray alternatives → · See all Holistics alternatives →
Recent activity from filearray and Holistics
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 2d agoHolisticsAI user attribute restricts AI access to sensitive data
- 16d agoHolisticsCustom currency and unit formats, per field
- 19d agoHolisticsFile history: per-file version timeline and restore
- 22d agoHolisticsCustom charts become AML code with GUI authoring
- 23d agoHolisticsColor palettes can be assigned at the theme level
- 27d agoHolisticsDate-range presets and typed shorthands
- 2mo agofilearraySegfault on out-of-bound margins fixed
- 3y agofilearrayLazy operator evaluation and macOS parallelism
- 3y agofilearraySequential read bug in fmap corrected
- 4y agofilearrayPartition limit removed by opening files on demand
- 4y agofilearrayHeader signatures and symbolic link detection
- 4y agofilearrayFlush timing left to the operating system
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between filearray and Holistics?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. Holistics is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 5.0 vs 0.0), with 0 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Is filearray better than Holistics?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. Holistics is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 5.0 vs 0.0), with 0 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Analytics products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to filearray?
Top filearray alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "filearray alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/filearray-r for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to Holistics?
Top Holistics alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Holistics alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/holistics for the full list with editorial commentary on each.