Book Image

Tableau Prep Cookbook

By : Hendrik Kleine
Book Image

Tableau Prep Cookbook

By: Hendrik Kleine

Overview of this book

Tableau Prep is a tool in the Tableau software suite, created specifically to develop data pipelines. This book will describe, in detail, a variety of scenarios that you can apply in your environment for developing, publishing, and maintaining complex Extract, Transform and Load (ETL) data pipelines. The book starts by showing you how to set up Tableau Prep Builder. You’ll learn how to obtain data from various data sources, including files, databases, and Tableau Extracts. Next, the book demonstrates how to perform data cleaning and data aggregation in Tableau Prep Builder. You’ll also gain an understanding of Tableau Prep Builder and how you can leverage it to create data pipelines that prepare your data for downstream analytics processes, including reporting and dashboard creation in Tableau. As part of a Tableau Prep flow, you’ll also explore how to use R and Python to implement data science components inside a data pipeline. In the final chapter, you’ll apply the knowledge you’ve gained to build two use cases from scratch, including a data flow for a retail store to prepare a robust dataset using multiple disparate sources and a data flow for a call center to perform ad hoc data analysis. By the end of this book, you’ll be able to create, run, and publish Tableau Prep flows and implement solutions to common problems in data pipelines.
Table of Contents (11 chapters)

Preparing data for generic BI tools

In this recipe, you'll learn how to use Tableau Prep to generate outputs for consumption by a variety of Business Intelligence (BI) tools. Specifically, we'll write a single output, from a flow with multiple outputs, to a CSV file. At the time of writing, output to CSV is the only non-Tableau proprietary format supported by Tableau Prep. Future releases of Tableau Prep will see the introduction of output to databases.

Getting ready

Open the Tableau Prep Superstore flow to follow along with the steps outlined.

How to do it…

In the steps that follow, we'll create an output that is suitable for consumption by data visualization and BI tools other than Tableau Desktop:

  1. Examine the output steps in the Superstore flow by clicking either output. In the bottom pane, notice how Output type is set to Tableau Data Extract (.hyper). This is the default output format for any output step added to a flow:

    Figure 1.21 –...