Notes on Tableau
Created 03/10/14
Updated 07/05/14, Updated 09/12/14, Updated 12/19/14, Updated 01/15/15, Updated 02/06/15, Updated 04/07/15
Updated 04/22/15, Updated 05/11/15
Introduction
Tableau Software (/tæbˈloʊ/ tab-LOH) is an American computer software company headquartered in Seattle, Washington. It
produces a family of interactive data visualization products focused on business intelligence.
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Tableau offers five main products: Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server, Tableau Online, Tableau Reader and Tableau
Public. Tableau Public and Tableau Reader are free to use, Tableau Server and Tableau Desktop comes with a 14
day fully functional free trial period. For commercial pricing, Tableau Desktop has a Professional and Personal
edition which are $1,999 and $999 respectively. For Tableau Online, an annual subscription starts at $500 for a
single user and scales to hundreds or thousands of users.
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Tableau Software has won awards including "Best Overall in Data Visualization" by DM Review, "Best of 2005 for
Data Analysis" by PC Magazine, and "2008 Best Business Intelligence Solution (CODiE award)" by the Software
& Information Industry Association.
[14]
Tableau 9 was released in April 2015:
Stay in the flow of your analysis with new features that smooth out your workflows. Add in analytics with
a click. Create powerful new calculations with Level of Detail Expression. Pivot and split that grumpy
Excel data. Publish it all to a brand-new Tableau Server. And do it all fast, fast, fast.
Product Details
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Tableau Desktop – With Tableau Desktop you can explore and visualize any data in minutes.
Tableau Server – Tableau Server is browser- and mobile-based insight anyone can use. Publish dashboards
with Tableau Desktop and share them throughout your organization. It’s easy to set up and even easier to
run. Empower your business to find answers in minutes, not months. It’s an IT dream come true.
Tableau Online – Tableau Online is a hosted version of Tableau Server, no setup required.
Tableau Public – Free platform for data stories on the web. This is a subset of Tableau Desktop and
Tableau Server. Has limits on data sources, but is otherwise quite capable.
Tableau Reader – viewer for results
Resources
“Tableau 9: The Official Guide Paperback” by George Peck. McGraw-Hill. Scheduled for release in October 2015.
“Tableau 8: The Official Guide Paperback” by George Peck. McGraw-Hill. August 2013, 230 pages. List price
$40.00, Amazon price $26.98. Rated 4 stars on Amazon.com.
There are also books from O’Reilly and technology publishers.
New Features in Version 9
The “Story” mode, which is a sequenced, scripted, presentation.
Tableau Desktop
This is their mainstream product. It provides data visualization and data analysis, using a variety of information
sources. You create visualizations organized as books and dashboards. You’ll be able to connect to data, create
interactive data visualizations and publish them directly to your website. Guide readers through a narrative of data
insights you’ve discovered. Let them interact with the data to make new discoveries. And do it all without writing a
single line of code.
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Connectivity
The personal version ($999/user) supports Excel, Access, text files, and Tableau data extract files.
The professional version ($1999/user) also adds relational databases such as MySQL and Postgres.
Interactivity
After reading in your data, the application organizes into Dimensions and Measures.
Really easy to move data columns into rows, columns, values, annotation overlays, etc.
Really easy to save results. You are saving to your local data store.
Chart Types
About a dozen in all, with a great deal of customization.
The “Show Me” window provides a quick way to switch chart types, and also highlights those chart types that make
sense for your specific data set.
Screen Shots
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Technology
There’s a revolutionary technology behind Tableau called VizQL: A Visual Query Language. You don’t need to be
a programmer to use Tableau. VizQL is all under the hood. But it lets us do what we do.
VizQL has many advantages compared to existing methods for visualizing data
1. VizQL is a computer language for describing tables, graphs, charts, maps, time series, tables of
visualizations and dashboards. It unifies all of these different visual representations into a simple language.
2. VizQL statements define the mapping from records returned from a dataset or database to marks on a
visualization (drawing primitives). Some fields in the record are mapped to the geometric properties of the
mark, including position, size and orientation; other fields are reflected in visual attributes like color and
pattern.
3. VizQL is a declarative language. The advantage of a declarative language is that the user describes “what”
picture should be created, not “how” to make it. Even better, a declarative approach lets people build up
amazing visualizations incrementally, in a process of stepwise refinement.
4. VizQL is high performance. It scales to extremely large datasets
Use Cases
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Connect to Data
Create a View
Create a Story - After you create a view you can use it to tell a story with your data. With Tableau Story
Points, you can show how facts are connected, provide context, demonstrate how decisions relate to
outcomes, and more.
Setting up the data model
First, Tableau will fetch the metadata of the tables in your database.
Then you “wire up” the relevant relationships, as shown below. In turn, this makes all fields of the selected tables
available as dimensions and measures for your worksheet tables and charts.
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Basic Plotting and Pivoting
Data Analysis
You can define filters and expressions (formulas for new columns).
Combining Worksheets into Dashboards
You can lay out the regions and even group the views to form a dashboard. The views are still interactive, and can
be linked. Filters can apply globally to all views.
Creating Stories
We haven’t done this yet
Tableau Server
Runs on your backend, or can be set up on AWS. Has a front-end which is similar to the desktop environment.
Allows for sharing results on the server storage.
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The collaboration aspect is the key feature here.
A “story” is a set of annotations that you add to a basic worksheet, perhaps to highlight a specific result or condition.
Pricing is based upon a quote. Probably varies with server configuration and sizing.
Tableau Online
This is packaged as an online service which combines all of the functions of Tableau Desktop and Tableau Server.
Nothing to set up on your machines.
You get 100GB of storage space.
All of the file, relational and online data sources available in Tableau Desktop. See full list.
Direct connections supported for Google BigQuery and Amazon Redshift.
Multidimensional (cube) data sources are not supported by Tableau Online.
Pricing is $500/user/year.
Tableau Public
A free subset of the functions from Tableau Desktop (limited data sources) and Tableau Server. Runs on your desk,
but then allows for sharing of resulting stories on an account that you create on Tableau’s servers. A really great
way to get started.
These shared versions stay live, because they run on the Tableau server.
Download Information
File Size: 100 MB / 148 MB
File Type: MSI, DMG
Version: 8.3 (now on 9.0)
Resource page is at http://www.tableau.com/public/training
Screen Shot
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Company Information
Tableau Public is a product of Tableau Software. They make fast analytics and data visualization products. Founded by
an Academy-Award winning professor from Stanford University, a savvy business leader with a passion for data,
and a brilliant computer scientist, they are trying to solve one of the most challenging problems in software –
making data understandable to ordinary people. They’ve become one of the fastest growing software companies in
the world.
They do have education and non-profit pricing, but you have to ask for details.
People
Chris Stolte, Pat Hanrahan and Christian Chabot founded Tableau with a simple mission: help people see and
understand their data. Joined by other world class leaders, they have the ingredients to deliver on that mission. They
are passionate. They have the experience. They're dedicated to making Tableau a great place to work. They're
supported by an engaged and helpful Board of Directors. And they love working with customers.
Investors
Went public in May 2013. This was considered to be the first IPO of the “Big Data” era. The market cap is
currently about $5.3B.
Data Analysis
You can define filters and expressions, and perform linear regression, etc.
But you can’t use this to train a predictive model, for instance.
Several partners do provide this facility. For instance, H2O Analytics has a ML package to add onto Tableau.
Another approach is to run a combination of R and Tableau.
Curtis’ Question
How to create parameters to filter views to specific start and end dates.
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Answer
Step 1: Create Start Date and End Date Parameters
1. In the Data window, click the drop-down arrow at the top right of Dimensions, and then select Create
Parameter.
2.
In the Create Parameter dialog box, name the parameter. In the example workbook, the parameter is
named Start Date.
3.
Under Data Type, select Date & time.
4.
Under Allowable values, select Range.
5.
Click Set from Field and select the date field. In the example workbook, the date field is named Order
Date.
6.
Click OK.
7.
Right-click the Start Date parameter and then select Show Parameter Control.
8.
Repeat steps 1-7 to create the End Date parameter.
Step 2: Create a Date Range Calculation
1. Right-click Order Date in the Dimensions pane and then select Create Calculated Field.
2.
Name the calculated field Date Range, and type the following in the Formula window, and then click OK:
[Order Date] >= [Start Date] AND [Order Date] <= [End Date]
Step 3: Add Date Range to Filters
1. Drag Date Range to Filters, select True, and then click OK.
2.
Right-click Date Range on the Filters shelf, select Apply to Worksheets, and then select All Using this
Data Source.
Additional Information
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Parameters are not dynamic. If the dates are added or removed from data source, follow the steps
in Parameter Values Do Not Update After Data Refresh.
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You can also use a Range of Dates filter to achieve the same result. However, you cannot use the Range of
Dates filter on blended data.
Questions/Open Issues
None at present.
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