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

Understanding live connections and extracts – scenarios for using each

When you first connect to a data source in Tableau Desktop or via the Tableau web client, the default connection type is set to live. A live connection means that Tableau will use the query engine of the data source engine for every query from Tableau. This also means that the data in your Tableau workbooks will always be fresh or up to date with the information that is in the underlying data source.

The alternative to live connections is extracts. Extracts copy the data from the underlying data source and extract them to Tableau’s high-performance analytic data engine, Hyper. We will be looking at extracts and the Hyper engine in the next section of this chapter.

Live connections might seem like the obvious choice as they ensure the data is up to date and they don’t require the moving of data. Another good, and sometimes necessary, use case for live connections is when the data engine...