Introduction of Tableau

Tableau Software is an American computer software company headquartered in Seattle, WA,

USA. It generates interactive data visualization products which focused on BI. The company
was established at Stanford University’s Department of Computer Science between 1997 and
2002.

The different products which tableau has built are:

Tableau desktop (Business analytics anyone can use)

Tableau Desktop is a data visualization application to facilitate you to examine virtually any kind
of structured data and generate highly interactive, beautiful graphs, dashboards, and reports
within minutes. Once a quick installation, you can tie to virtually any data source from
spreadsheets to data warehouses and display information in several graphic perspectives.
Designed to be easy to utilize, you’ll be working more rapidly than ever before.

Tableau server

It is a business intelligence application which offers browser-based analytics anyone can utilize.
It is a rapid-fire alternative to the slow pace of traditional BI software. It is an online solution
meant for sharing, distributing, and collaborating on content created in Tableau.

What makes Tableau different? It is proposed for everyone. There is no scripting required, so
everyone can grow to be an analytics expert. You can grow your deployment, as you require it.

Tableau online

Tableau Online is a secure, cloud-based solution used for sharing, distributing, and
collaborating on Tableau views and dashboards. Tableau Online set the flexibility and ease of a
powerful cloud-based data visualization solution to work intended for you—without servers,
server software, or IT support. It builds rapid-fire business analytics easier than ever. Share
dashboards among your whole company and with customers and partners— in minutes.
Provide live, interactive sights of data to facilitate people answer their own questions, right in a
web browser or on a tablet. And do it in a secure, hosted environment. Tableau Online be able
to scale up as much as you require and you can use it wherever you require it. You don’t have
to purchase, set up or manage any infrastructure.
 Tableau public

Tableau Public is free software to facilitate anyone to connect to a spreadsheet or file and
create interactive data visualizations for the web. It is delivered as a service which permits user
to be up and running overnight. With Tableau Public user can construct amazing interactive
visuals and publish them quickly, without the help of programmers or IT.

It is designed for organizations to facilitate their websites with interactive data visualizations.
There are higher limits on the size of data you can work with. And among other features, you
can keep your underlying data hidden.

Tableau Reader

Tableau Reader is a free-to-download tool that allows you to view packaged workbooks with full
interactivity. It's available for both PC and Mac users. Some organizations use Tableau
Reader far more than they should while others might benefit by adding it to their options for their
end users.

Features of Tableau

 It is very easy to utilize.

 You don’t have to be familiar with programming of any sort, all you require is a few data
and tableau to generate reports that can visually enchanting and which tells a story which
user have to tell their managers or impress their professor in class.
 It has drag and drop feature by which user can simply generate story or reports with
drag and drop and a few thoughts.
 This is feasible due to the VizQL (VizQL is a visual query language which translates
drag-and-drop actions into data queries and then expresses that data visually. VizQL delivers
dramatic gains in people’s ability to see and understand data by abstracting the underlying
complexities of query and analysis).

Evaluation of Tableau

Strengths

Speed  

The best strength point of Tableau is its speed through which it evaluates millions of rows and
provides the necessary responses in moment.
 Ease of use

It is very simple to use. One can begin with Tableau even with no earlier programming
experience. With just fundamental MS Excel skills individual can simply learn Tableau.

Beautiful and interactive dashboard

The Dashboard of Tableau is very interactive and provides dynamic outcomes. Rich
visualizations can be produced very easily. The graphics and charts are smart and beautiful.
Images, web pages and documents can be added hooked on to the dashboard for simple story
telling. All this guides to a large extent coming into the data.

Direct connection

Tableau permits the users to directly hook up with databases, cubes, and data warehouses etc.
The data access is so simple without any advanced setup and the data is live to be getting
updated on its own. Single can select tables as of spreadsheets to data from Hadoop to
generate a great mash-up and get preferred outcomes in no time. This is easy ad hoc business
analytics.

Easy publishing and sharing

After examine the data, the outcomes can be shared live with just a a small number of clicks.
The dashboard can be issued to share it live on web and mobile devices.

Learn more about Tableau Server performance tuning in this riveting blog post now.

Growing market

Tableau is somewhat fresh in the BI marketplace but its market share is increasing day by day.
It is being almost all industry, as of transportation to healthcare. It has huge user base, which
consists of big companies. They utilize Tableau on a on a daily basis to gather their business
Intelligence necessities.

Weakness

 Not comprehensive solution, specialize in BI

 No predictive analytical capabilities
 Customization and Integration with other apps
 Expandability for analytics
 Social media integration
 Robust enterprise-class security
 TABLEAU Version History
Version Released

4.0 1-January-2008

5.0 29-May-2009

6.0 10-Nov-2010

7.0 17-Jan-2012

8.0 20-March-2013

8.1 20-Nov-2013

8.2 18-June-2014

8.3 1-Dec-2014

9.0 6-April-2015

9.1 14-Sept-2015

9.2 7-Dec-2015

9.3 23-Mar-2016

10.0 15-Aug- 2016

10.1 1-Nov-2016

10.2 28-Feb-2017

10.3 31-May-2017

10.4 25-Sept-2017

10.5 10-Jan-2018

2018.1 24-April-2018

2018.2 30-July-2018
 Tableau Architecture:
Tableau has a highly scalable, n-tier client-server architecture that serves mobile clients, web
clients and desktop-installed software. Tableau Desktop is the authoring and publishing tool
that is used to create shared views on Tableau Server.
Tableau server is an enterprise business class platform it can set up hundreds of thousands of
users. It offers powerful mobile and web-based analytic works with companies existing data and
security protocol.

Data Layer: The basic characteristic of tableau that supports your choice of data architecture.
Tableau does not require any restrictions for the database like data to be stored in any single
system. Most of the organizations have a heterogeneous environment. Tableau can work with
all these simultaneously. Tableau provides easy options to upgrade your data to be fast and
responsive with our fast in-memory Data Engine

Data Connectors: Tableau includes a number of optimized data connectors for databases such
as Microsoft Excel, SQL Server, Oracle, Teradata, Vertica, Cloudera Hadoop, and much more.
There is also a generic ODBC connector for any systems without a native connector. Tableau
provides two modes for interacting with data: Live connection or In-memory. Users can switch
between a live and in-memory connection as they choose.

 
Live connection:  Tableau’s data connectors leverage your existing data by sending dynamic
SQL or MDX statements directly to the source database rather than importing all the data. If you
want to fastly import all the data then you can take live connection. Additionally, this means that
Tableau can effectively utilize unlimited amounts of data – in fact, Tableau is the front-end
analytics client to many of the largest databases in the world. Tableau has optimized each
connector to take advantage of the unique characteristics of each data source.

In-memory:  Tableau offers a fast analytic performance due to in-memory data engine. You
connect to any data, with one click; data engine will extract the data and bring it in memory in
the tableau. Data engine utilized your entire system to get the fast query response on million of
rows of data. Data engine can access the disk store as well as RAM and cache memory; it is
not limited by the amount of memory on a system. There is no requirement that an entire data
set is loaded into memory to achieve its performance goals.

Tableau Server Components:

Application Server

Viz SQL server

Data server

Application Server: Application server provides the authorization and authentications from the
database.

 VIZ sql server: VIZ sql server converts the sql queries into visualization

Data Server: data server centrally manage and store tableau data sources. It also maintains
Metadata from tableau desktop such as calculations, definition, and groups. The published data
can be based on

SETS IN TABLEAU:

Sets are custom fields that define a subset of data based on some conditions. Sets can be
based on the computed condition, alternatively if data changes the computed sets get updated.

Tableau displays sets at the bottom of the data pane and labels them with the set icon.

When we create a set based on condition, the values which satisfies the condition will come
under the IN bound and remaining values come under the OUT bound.
Note: Sets can be created only on dimensions. We cannot create sets on measure. If you want
to create sets on measures then you should convert measure as dimension.

CREATING A SET:

There are two ways to create and modify sets in Tableau Environment.

First way to create the set select marks from the view

Second ways right click on a field in the data pane.

Sets are Two Types Namely 1.Constant Set and 2.Computed Set.

Constant Set: A constant set contains a specified list of members based on one or more
dimensions.

Computed Set: A computed set is dynamic and the members change as the underlying data
changes.

Creating Constant Set:

To create a constant set we need to select the members which we want to include in set and
these members are fixed. we can’t change again. A constant set can be based on single and
multiple dimensions.

Steps to create constant set:

1. Select one or more marks or headers in the view.

 
2. Right-click and select Create Set or click the Create Set option on the tooltip.

3. In the Create Set dialog box, type a name for the set.

 
 

4. When finished click OK.

Creating Computed Set:

The computed sets are applicable only for a single dimension. The members of a computed set
are dynamic and change when underlying data changes.

Steps to create computed set:

1. Right-click on the dimension in the Data pane.

2. Select Create Set.

 
 

3. In the Create Set dialog box, type a name for the set.

4. The dialog box provides three tabs i.e., General, Condition and Top.

5. On the General tab in the Create Set dialog box, select one or more values or alternatively
select the Use All option to always consider all members even when new members are added
or removed.

 
 

6.Condition: Use the Condition tab to give the rule that includes the members in the set
Example, you may specify a condition that is based on the total sales that only includes
products with sales over $100,000.

 
 

7. Top: Use the top Tab to define limit to include the members in the set.

For Example: To get the top5 sales

8. When finished, click OK.

By using Sets:

The created sets will displays on bottom of data pane, now we can use the sets to view.

Show IN/OPOUT Set

Switch a set to use In/Out mode by selecting Show In/Out of Set on the field menu. When a set
is in In/Out mode, the field on the shelf is prefaced by the text, "IN/OUT" followed by the set
name.

Show Members IN Set

Switch a set to list the individual members by selecting Show Members in Set on the field
menu.

Combining Sets:
By using combine set option we can combine two set or we can compare two members. To
compare the two sets they must be from same dimension.

Steps to create Combine Set:

1. Select two sets in the Data pane that you want to combine.

2. Right-click (control-click on Mac) the sets and select Create Combined Set.
 

3. In the Create Set dialog box, type a name for the new combined set.

 
 

4. Verify that the two sets you want to combine are selected in the two drop-down menus.
5. Select one of the following options for how to combine the sets:

5a.All Members in Both Sets- the combined set will contain all of the members from both sets.

5b.Shared Members in Both Sets- the combined set will only contain members that exist in
both sets.

5c.Except Shared Members- the combined set will contain all members from the specified set
that don't exist in the second set. These options are equivalent to subtracting one set from
another.

6. Optionally specify a character that will separate the members if the sets represent multiple
dimensions.

7. When finished, click OK.