Book Image

Data Modeling with Tableau

By : Kirk Munroe
Book Image

Data Modeling with Tableau

By: Kirk Munroe

Overview of this book

Tableau is unlike most other BI platforms that have a single data modeling tool and enterprise data model (for example, LookML from Google’s Looker). That doesn’t mean Tableau doesn’t have enterprise data governance; it is both robust and highly flexible. This book will help you effectively use Tableau governance models to build a data-driven organization. Data Modeling with Tableau is an extensive guide, complete with step-by-step explanations of essential concepts, practical examples, and hands-on exercises. As you progress through the chapters, you’ll learn the role that Tableau Prep Builder and Tableau Desktop each play in data modeling. You’ll also explore the components of Tableau Server and Tableau Cloud that make data modeling more robust, secure, and performant. Moreover, by extending data models for Ask and Explain Data, you’ll gain the knowledge required to extend analytics to more people in their organizations, leading to better data-driven decisions. Finally, this book will guide you through the entire Tableau stack and the techniques required to build the right level of governance into Tableau data models for the correct use cases. By the end of this Tableau book, you’ll have a firm understanding of how to leverage data modeling in Tableau to benefit your organization.
Table of Contents (22 chapters)
1
Part 1: Data Modeling on the Tableau Platform
4
Part 2: Tableau Prep Builder for Data Modeling
9
Part 3: Tableau Desktop for Data Modeling
14
Part 4: Data Modeling with Tableau Server and Online

Connecting to files in Tableau Desktop

Tableau Desktop has the flexibility to connect to many different types of data sources. First, we are going to look at flat files. Flat files have a lot of use cases from the personal analysis of downloaded files to prototyping development before connecting to enterprise databases.

The different types of flat files that Tableau can connect to include the following:

  • Microsoft Excel
  • Text files (including delimited and character-separated files)
  • Spatial files (including Esri, GeoJSON, KML, KMZ, MapInfo, and TopoJSON files)
  • Statistical files (including SAS, SPSS, and R output)
  • JSON files (JavaScript Object Notation files)
  • PDF files (tables from Adobe’s Portable Document Format files)

We will begin by connecting to a Microsoft Excel file.

Getting data from Microsoft Excel files

Microsoft Excel has become an almost ubiquitous method of collecting and analyzing data. Compared with Tableau, Microsoft...