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

The Tableau Hyper engine

Tableau extracts are stored in a proprietary database engine called Hyper. The Hyper engine is included with Tableau Desktop, Tableau Prep Builder, Tableau Server, and Tableau Cloud and therefore does not have any additional licensing requirements. In a technical sense, the term extract refers to data that is moved from its original source for the purposes of analysis. The term Hyper refers to the Tableau technology that houses and manages the extracted data. However, the terms are often used interchangeably or even together as Hyper extract. In fact, the extracted data will sit on a disk with a .hyper extension.

It is important to mention Hyper in this chapter as it is an important piece of the data modeling stack in Tableau. For the purposes of this book, we never interact with Hyper directly, but it is often at work behind the scenes when our data models are from extracted data. We have now explored published and embedded data sources and live and extract...