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)

Aggregating values

There are several methods to pre-aggregate your data in your Tableau Prep pipeline. Ideally, your data will be aggregated in your data connection. For example, when connecting to a database, you may be able to write a query that includes a GROUP BY statement so that the data is aggregated before being ingested into Tableau Prep.

Often, such an ideal scenario is not available for a variety of reasons, and sometimes it is simply not possible, for example, when connecting to files such as Excel or CSV files.

In this recipe, we'll look at the preferred methods for most users when aggregating data in Tableau Prep, using the aptly named Aggregate step.

Getting ready

To follow along with this recipe, download the Sample Files 4.2 folder from this book's GitHub repository. In this flow, you'll find a slimmed-down version of the sample Superstore flow provided by Tableau.

The last step in this flow contains more than 20 fields and outputs more...