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

Scheduling Tableau Prep flows from Tableau Prep Conductor

We looked at Tableau Prep Builder in Chapter 4, Chapter 5, and Chapter 6. When we use the Tableau Prep Builder client software, we can save our flows to our filesystem as Tableau Prep flows (the.tfl file extension) or Tableau Prep packaged files (the.tflx file extension). Tableau Prep flow files contain information on data server connections and the instructions we create in the flow. Tableau Prep packaged flow files contain the same information, plus the data from any file-based sources that have been embedded. In addition to saving flow files locally, Tableau Prep flows can be published to Tableau Server or Cloud.

When we use the Tableau Prep Builder web client, we only have the option to publish our flows to Tableau Server or Cloud. From both the installed client and web client, we can run our flows manually. When we run flows, Tableau performs all the data transformation steps we created and runs any outputs in the flow...