Book Image

Learning Tableau 10 - Second Edition

Book Image

Learning Tableau 10 - Second Edition

Overview of this book

Tableau has for some time been one of the most popular Business Intelligence and data visualization tools available. Why? Because, quite simply, it’s a tool that’s responsive to the needs of modern businesses. But it’s most effective when you know how to get what you want from it – it might make your business intelligent, but it isn’t going to make you intelligent… We’ll make sure you’re well prepared to take full advantage of Tableau 10’s new features. Whether you’re an experienced data analyst that wants to explore 2016’s new Tableau, or you’re a beginner that wants to expand their skillset and bring a more professional and sharper approach to their organization, we’ve got you covered. Beginning with the fundamentals, such as data preparation, you’ll soon learn how to build and customize your own data visualizations and dashboards, essential for high-level visibility and effective data storytelling. You’ll also find out how to so trend analysis and forecasting using clustering and distribution models to inform your analytics. But it’s not just about you – when it comes to data it’s all about availability and access. That’s why we’ll show you how to share your Tableau visualizations. It’s only once insights are shared and communicated that you – and your organization – will start making smarter and informed decisions. And really, that’s exactly what this guide is for.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Learning Tableau 10 Second Edition
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface

Connecting to data


There is virtually no limit to the data Tableau can visualize. Each successive version of Tableau adds new native connections. Tableau continues to add native connectors for cloud-based data and recently included the Web Data Connector, which allows you to custom-build a connector for any online data you wish to retrieve. Additionally, for any database without a native connection, Tableau gives you the ability to use a generic ODBC connection. The Extract API allows you to programmatically extract and combine any data source(s) for use in Tableau.

You may have multiple data source connections to different sources in the same workbook. Each connection will show up under the Data tab on the left sidebar.

This section will focus on a few practical examples of connecting to various data sources. We won't cover every possible connection, but we will cover several that are representative of others. You may or may not have access to some of the data sources in the following examples...