Tableau Your Data!: Fast and Easy Visual Analysis with Tableau Software

CHAPTER 2

Connecting to Your Data

I think a manager's world is not black and white. It's a world filled with uncertainties and dilemmas. The sort of thing that would leave any neophyte moaning, “What the Hell is this.”

GORDON MACKENZIE¹

It would be nice if all the data you needed to access resided in one place, but it doesn't. Your data is scattered over multiple databases, text files, spreadsheets, and public services. Connecting to a wide variety of datasources directly, Tableau makes it much easier to analyze data residing in different places. Currently there are thirty-three different database connectors available with more being added every year. You can analyze spreadsheets, public data tools, analytic databases, Hadoop, and a large variety of general-purpose databases as well as data cubes.

HOW TO CONNECT TO YOUR DATA

When you open Tableau you are taken to the home page where you can easily select from previous workbooks, sample workbooks, and saved datasources. You can also connect to new datasources by selecting Connect to Data. Figure 2-1 displays the screen.

The option In a File is for connecting to locally stored data or file based data. Tableau Personal edition can only access Excel, Access, and text files (txt, csv). You can also import from datasources stored in other workbooks.

The options listed beneath On a Server’ link to data stored in a database, data cube, or a cloud service. Although all of these databases have very different ways of storing and looking up ...