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

Data Output from Tableau Prep Builder

In the previous three chapters, we learned about preparing, cleaning, and transforming data using Tableau Prep Builder. In this chapter, we will look at the final step of creating a data model in Tableau Prep Builder, the output step.

When using Tableau Prep Builder to create our data models, the transformed data always needs to have a destination location. This means that when using Tableau Prep Builder, after preparing our data for analysis, it needs to be loaded to a new location before it can be consumed. This is different than Tableau Desktop and Tableau web editing, which also allow the option of creating a data model on a live connection.

Tableau Prep Builder gives four choices for where we can load our data through the output step. These are flat files, Tableau published data sources, database tables, and CRM analytics.

Note

The option to output to CRM analytics was added in the 2022.3 release of Tableau Prep Builder. To use...