

But if you have a relatively simple scenario, joining disparate sources can be accomplished in Tableau Prep.NOTE: Currently, the initial selection of schemas and tables is not quite as intuitive as with some data sources such as Oracle. This is often due to differences in the level of detail, mismatched data, etc. When not dealing with simple data like Tableau’s Sample Superstore, joins can be tricky. It should be pointed out that doing these joins is often easier said than done. Once you have your sources set up, you draw a line between them and add a join.This functionality is similar to the way other ETL tools do joins. If the connection is a database, such as SQL Server, you specify the schema, the tables and which columns you want to bring in. See below: Within Tableau Prep, you add connections to these sources. The main differences between Tableau’s new Tableau Prep tool and data prep from within Tableau Desktopare in the presentation and in the number of options available.One such difference is that you can connect to 70 different data sources in Tableau Desktop and in the first production release of Tableau Prep, you can connect to 28 data sources.

Tableau Desktop lets you combine sources by “joining” or “blending.” Similarly, Tableau Prep lets you combine an Oracle Table, a SQL Server table and a Microsoft Excel worksheet into one data source with just a couple of clicks.While some data prep can be done in Tableau Desktop’s data source tab, there are limitations to what can be done. For quite some time, one of Tableau’s strengths has been its ability to join multiple data sources. While maybe not as fully featured as some ETL (extract, transformation and load) tools like Informatica and Alteryx, Tableau Prep has some nice features that should make life easier for relatively simple ETL scenarios. I recently had the chance to take part in the beta program for Tableau Prep/Project Maestro. According to Tableau, “Tableau Prep will make it possible for more people, from IT to business users, to easily prep their data with a direct and visual approach.”
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Under the new April 2018 licensing model, it comes with the Tableau Creator license (see Tableau Pricing). Tableau Prep was announced under the name Project Maestro at the 2017 Tableau Conference and launched in April 2018. If these scenarios are painfully familiar to you, then Tableau Prep may be just what the (Tableau) doctor ordered.
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And manual steps can be difficult to document and share with others. Have you ever needed to do a little more in the way of data prep than what’s provided in the Tableau Data Source tab? If you are not a SQL expert, how do you do the prep required to make your data Tableau friendly? In the past, have you resorted to dumping data to a CSV file or Excel and using Excel for “cleaning” before bringing data into Tableau? What happens if you have multiple sources? Sure, some things can be done in Tableau Desktop using features such as cross-database joins and pivots, but it can be hard to generate repeatable steps that can be used to transform your data. Get unbiased perspectives based on real-world, hands-on experience. Taught by real-world subject matter experts. Practical instruction for real-world application. Tools to save time, save money, and speed the pace and accuracy of analytics.

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