Doing data visualizations with Tableau

A beginner’s taleRay Schwartz

William Paterson University of New JerseyMay 3, 2016

ELUNA Developers Day 3:30pm–3:55pm, Cox Convention 20

Oklahoma City, OK

Overview• Brief introduction to the suite of Tableau products. What they are,

who are they for, and what they can do.• Introduction to Tableau Public• Demonstration of connecting data• Demonstration of creating a workbook• Demonstration of creating a dashboard• Discussion of APIs.

Tableau ProductsTableau DesktopA Windows/Mac application that comes in two editions (Personal and Professional). Personal allows connection to files and local saving only, while Professional also allows individuals to connect to a wider variety of data sources and save to your own server, Tableau Online servers, or Tableau Public servers. Tableau Desktop is free for students and instructors at accredited academic institutions.Tableau ServerBest suited for enterprise-wide deployments, this is a business intelligence system for secure access to enterprise data and user interaction via web portals on a company intranet (requires Desktop Professional). Tableau OnlineA hosted solution for storing and accessing data dashboards in the cloud (requires Desktop Professional.

Jones, B. (2014). Communicating Data with Tableau (1 edition). Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media.

Tableau PublicTableau Public is a free application and visualization hosting service for sharing of publicly available data on the Web (exists as a standalone Windows/Mac application, or can be published to via Desktop Professional).

Tableau ReaderA free Windows/Mac application that allows users to open saved Tableau workbook files (.twbx) and to view and interact with visualizations that have been created and saved locally with Tableau Desktop or downloaded from the Web via Tableau Public. Users of Tableau Reader cannot create new visualizations or change the design of existing ones.

Jones, B. (2014). Communicating Data with Tableau (1 edition). Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media.

All of these products incorporate the same data visualization user interface and VizQL engine. Tableau Desktop Professional is the cornerstone product that allows users to access the other products. The products differ in the types of data sources users can connect to and how visualizations can be shared with others.

Jones, B. (2014). Communicating Data with Tableau (1 edition). Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media.

Tableau PublicTableau Public is a data discovery tool. It should not be confused with enterprise-grade business intelligence tools, such as Tableau Desktop and Server, QlikView, and Cognos Insight. Those tools integrate with corporate networks and security protocols as well as server-based data warehouses.

Ohmann, A., & Floyd, M. (2015). Creating Data Stories with Tableau Public. Packt Publishing.

Limitations of Tableau Public• Support for data sets of up to 10 million rows so that anyone can

analyze nearly all publicly available datasets for free.• An increased storage limit of 10 GB for everyone, so authors can

create and store more information in Tableau Public.• The ability to limit the downloading of files from Tableau Public,

letting authors keep their workbooks proprietary.

Tableau SDKStarting in Tableau 9.1, the Tableau Data Extract API is incorporated into the Tableau SDK. The SDK supports Windows, Linux, and the Mac, using C, C++, Java, and Python.The Tableau SDK contains a set of functions for creating extracts and for publishing extracts to a Tableau Server. The SDK includes these APIs:• Extract API. This API lets you create and populate Tableau Data Extract (.tde)

files. Using this API, you can write a program that connects to data sources that are not currently supported by Tableau, and then write the data into a .tde file for use later by Tableau. Note: This API was previously called the Tableau Data Extract API or TDE API.• Server API. This API lets you publish data extracts as data sources to a Tableau

Server.

https://onlinehelp.tableau.com/current/pro/online/mac/en-us/extracting_TDE_API.htmlhttps://onlinehelp.tableau.com/current/api/sdk/en-us/help.htm

Tableau JavaScript APIUse the Tableau JavaScript API to integrate Tableau visualizations into your own web applications.Here are some of the things that you can do with the JavaScript API:• Display visualizations from Tableau Server, Tableau Public, and Tableau

Online in web pages.• Dynamically load and resize visualizations.• Filter the data displayed in visualizations with HTML controls in the page.• Select marks in visualizations.• Respond to events in visualizations.• Export visualizations to an image or PDF file.

http://onlinehelp.tableau.com/current/api/js_api/en-us/JavaScriptAPI/js_api.htm

References• Jones, B. (2014). Communicating Data with Tableau (1 edition).

Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media.• Milligan, J. N. (2015). Learning Tableau - How Data Visualization Brings

Business Intelligence to Life. Packt Publishing.• Murray, D. G. (2016). Tableau Your Data!: Fast and Easy Visual Analysis

with Tableau Software (2 edition). Indianapolis, IN: Wiley.• Nandeshwar, A. (2013). Tableau Data Visualization Cookbook. Packt

Publishing.• Ohmann, A., & Floyd, M. (2015). Creating Data Stories with Tableau

Public. Packt Publishing.

• Tableau Software. (2016). All Technical Specifications. Retrieved May 2, 2016, from http://www.tableau.com/products/techspecs• Tableau Software. (2016). Analytics for Every Student, Educator, and

Campus. Retrieved May 2, 2016, from http://www.tableau.com/academic• Tableau Software. (2016). Tableau Data Extract API. Retrieved May 2, 2016,

from https://onlinehelp.tableau.com/current/pro/online/mac/en-us/extracting_TDE_API.html• Tableau Software. (2016). Tableau JavaSCript API. Retrieved May 2, 2016,

from http://onlinehelp.tableau.com/current/api/js_api/en-us/JavaScriptAPI/js_api.htm• Tableau Software. (2016). Tableau SDK. Retrieved May 2, 2016, from

https://onlinehelp.tableau.com/current/api/sdk/en-us/help.htm