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 new columns by joining data

In this section, we are going to create a join to add additional fields (or columns) of data to add the width of the data model. Adding new columns opens the opportunity for richer analysis. In our case, from the previous section, we only have Product ID in our data. If we want to analyze our sales by product category, product sub-category, and even product name, we need to join those fields to our data model.

We will be using the following file in this section:

  • Product Database.xlsx

We will now start the process of creating our first union in Tableau:

  1. Picking up from where we left off in our flow, click on the + symbol in the connection pane, select Microsoft Excel from the To a File section and, from the location where you saved the files from GitHub, find and select the file called Product Database.xlsx and click on OK.
  2. Hold down the left mouse key on the + symbol to the right of the Product DB box in the flow. Then...