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

Adding rows to our data model with unions and wildcard unions

Before beginning our exercises in Tableau Prep Builder, as mentioned in Chapter 3, in the Using Tableau Prep Builder to connect to data section, please make a note of the directory name where you have stored these files from GitHub:

  • Sales Argentina.csv
  • Sales Chile.csv
  • Sales Colombia.csv
  • Superstore Sales Orders - Canada.xlsx
  • Superstore Sales Orders - US.xlsx

Create a sub-directory in the directory where you downloaded the files from Github. Call the sub-directory South America Sales and move the Sales Argentina.csv, Sales Chile.csv, and Sales Colombia.csv files into this new sub-directory. In this section, we will explore unions. Thinking back to our exploration of how Tableau likes data in Chapter 2, unions are a method of adding additional rows of data. This makes our data model longer. In the next section of this chapter, we will look at joins. Joins are a way to add new columns. Joins make...