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 the Tableau data server

Typically, Tableau Server and Cloud are thought of as servers that provide web interfaces to create, share, and manage data analytics, typically in the form of dashboards. Tableau Server and Cloud also provide other capabilities including acting as a data server.

Tableau has two data server features. The first of these features is only available with the Data Management licensing and is called virtual connections. Virtual connections aren’t data models but a method of accessing a database through Tableau Server and Cloud. We explored virtual connections in Chapter 2.

The more common feature is the published data source feature. Published data sources are the best practice for sharing data models with others in your organization. We will be looking at extending the metadata of published data sources in Chapter 10. We also created our first published data source from Tableau Prep Builder in the previous chapter, Chapter 6. Let’...