What is Tableau? Uses of Tableau Software Tool
David Carter
⚡ Smart Summary
Tableau is a data visualization platform used across the Business Intelligence industry to turn raw records into dashboards without programming. This page explains the product suite, licensing roles, how the engine connects to data, practical applications, and a direct comparison against Excel.
What is Tableau?
Tableau is a powerful and widely used data visualization tool in the Business Intelligence Industry. It helps in simplifying raw data in a very easily understandable format. Tableau helps create the data that can be understood by professionals at any level in an organization. It also allows non-technical users to create customized dashboards.
Data analysis is very fast with Tableau tool and the visualizations created are in the form of dashboards and worksheets.
The best features of Tableau software are
- Data Blending
- Real time analysis
- Collaboration of data
The great thing about Tableau software is that it does not require any technical or any kind of programming skills to operate. The tool has garnered interest among the people from all sectors such as business, researchers, different industries, etc.
Tableau Software was founded in 2003 and was acquired by Salesforce in 2019. The product names used across the suite changed after that acquisition, so the section below reflects the current naming.
Tableau Product Suite
The Tableau Product Suite consists of
- Tableau Desktop
- Tableau Public
- Tableau Prep Builder
- Tableau Cloud (formerly Tableau Online)
- Tableau Server
- Tableau Reader
The diagram above splits the five core products along the same line used below: authoring on one side, distribution on the other.
For a clear understanding, data analytics in Tableau tool can be classified into two section.
- Developer Tools: The Tableau tools that are used for development such as the creation of dashboards, charts, report generation, visualization fall into this category. The Tableau products, under this category, are Tableau Desktop, Tableau Public, and Tableau Prep Builder.
- Sharing Tools: As the name suggests, the purpose of these Tableau products is sharing the visualizations, reports, dashboards that were created using the developer tools. Products that fall into this category are Tableau Cloud, Server, and Reader.
Let’s study all the Tableau products one by one.
Tableau Desktop
Tableau Desktop has a rich feature set and allows you to code and customize reports. Right from creating the charts, reports, to blending them all together to form a dashboard, all the necessary work is created in Tableau Desktop.
For live data analysis, Tableau Desktop provides connectivity to Data Warehouse, as well as other various types of files. The workbooks and the dashboards created here can be either shared locally or publicly.
Tableau Desktop was historically sold as two editions, Personal and Professional, which differed in whether work could be published to a server. Those editions have been replaced by the role-based licensing explained later on this page, and Tableau Desktop now ships as part of a Creator seat.
Tableau Public
It is Tableau version specially build for the cost-effective users. By the word “Public,” it means that the workbooks created cannot be saved locally; in turn, it should be saved to the Tableau’s public cloud which can be viewed and accessed by anyone.
There is no privacy to the files saved to the cloud since anyone can download and access the same. This version is the best for the individuals who want to learn Tableau and for the ones who want to share their data with the general public.
Tableau Prep Builder
Tableau Prep Builder handles the cleaning step that comes before visualization. It provides a visual flow in which rows are filtered, columns split or merged, values standardised, and several sources joined or unioned together.
Each step previews the affected rows, so a data problem is visible while it is being fixed rather than after a chart looks wrong. Finished flows save as a data source that Tableau Desktop opens directly, and they can be scheduled to refresh on Tableau Server or Tableau Cloud.
Tableau Server
The software is specifically used to share the workbooks, visualizations that are created in the Tableau Desktop application across the organization. To share dashboards in the Tableau Server, you must first publish your work in the Tableau Desktop. Once the work has been uploaded to the server, it will be accessible only to the licensed users.
However, It’s not necessary that the licensed users need to have the Tableau Server installed on their machine. They just require the login credentials with which they can check reports via a web browser. The security is high in Tableau server, and it is much suited for quick and effective sharing of data in an organization.
The admin of the organization will always have full control over the server. The hardware and the software are maintained by the organization.
Tableau Cloud
Tableau Cloud, known as Tableau Online until 2022, is the hosted sharing service. Its functionalities are similar to Tableau Server, but the data is stored on servers hosted in the cloud which are maintained by the Tableau group, so no hardware has to be sized, patched, or upgraded by the customer.
Tableau Cloud connects directly to dozens of cloud-hosted data sources such as MySQL, Hive, Amazon Redshift, Snowflake, Databricks, and Spark SQL, and the connector list grows with each release.
To publish, both Tableau Cloud and Server require the workbooks created by Tableau Desktop. Data that is streamed from web applications such as Google Analytics and Salesforce is also supported by Tableau Server and Tableau Cloud.
Tableau Reader
Tableau Reader is a free tool which allows you to view the workbooks and visualizations created using Tableau Desktop or Tableau Public. The data can be filtered but editing and modifications are restricted. The security level is zero in Tableau Reader as anyone who gets the workbook can view it using Tableau Reader.
If you want to share the dashboards that you have created, the receiver should have Tableau Reader to view the document.
Tableau Licensing: Creator, Explorer, and Viewer
Which products a person can actually open is decided by the licence attached to their account rather than by a separate installer. Since 2018 Tableau has sold three role-based seats, and every deployment mixes them.
| Seat | What it includes | Typical user |
|---|---|---|
| Creator | Tableau Desktop, Tableau Prep Builder, and full web authoring on Server or Cloud. Can connect to new data sources and publish them. | Analyst or developer who builds data sources and dashboards from scratch |
| Explorer | Web authoring on published data sources, editing existing workbooks, creating alerts and subscriptions. No Desktop or Prep Builder. | Power user who reshapes existing dashboards but does not model new data |
| Viewer | Reading published dashboards, filtering, commenting, exporting, and subscribing. No authoring. | Manager or stakeholder who consumes reports |
Most organisations buy a few Creator seats, more Explorer seats, and Viewer seats for everyone else. Tableau Pulse, which pushes metric changes and plain-language explanations to users, is bundled with these seats rather than sold separately.
How does Tableau work?
Tableau connects and extracts the data stored in various places. It can pull data from any platform imaginable. A simple database such as an excel, pdf, to a complex database like Oracle, a database in the cloud such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure SQL database, Google Cloud SQL and various other data sources can be extracted by Tableau.
When Tableau is launched, ready data connectors are available which allows you to connect to any database. Depending on the version of Tableau that you have purchased the number of data connectors supported by Tableau will vary. The mechanics of each connection type are covered separately in the guide to Tableau data connections.
The pulled data can be either connected live or extracted to the Tableau’s data engine, Tableau Desktop. This is where the Data analyst, data engineer work with the data that was pulled up and develop visualizations. The created dashboards are shared with the users as a static file. The users who receive the dashboards views the file using Tableau Reader.
The data from the Tableau Desktop can be published to the Tableau server. This is an enterprise platform where collaboration, distribution, governance, security model, automation features are supported. With the Tableau server, the end users have a better experience in accessing the files from all locations be it a desktop, mobile or email. The component-level detail of that platform is set out in the Tableau architecture breakdown.
Tableau Uses
Following are the main uses and applications of Tableau:
- Business Intelligence
- Data Visualization
- Data Collaboration
- Data Blending
- Real-time data analysis
- Query translation into visualization
- To import large size of data
- To create no-code data queries
- To manage large size metadata
Because several of these uses overlap with a spreadsheet, the comparison below sets out where each tool is the better choice.
Excel Vs. Tableau
Both Excel and Tableau are data analysis tools, but each tool has its unique approach to data exploration. However, the analysis in Tableau is more potent than excel.
Excel works with rows and columns in spreadsheets whereas Tableau enables in exploring excel data using its drag and drop feature. Tableau formats the data in Graphs, pictures that are easily understandable.
| Parameters | Excel | Tableau |
|---|---|---|
| Purpose | Spreadsheet application used for manipulating the data. | Perfect visualization tool used for analysis. |
| Usage | Most suitable for statistical analysis of structured data. | Most suitable for quick and easy representation of big data which helps in resolving the big data issues. |
| Performance | Moderate speed with no option to quicken. | Moderate speed with options to optimize and enhance the progress of an operation. |
| Security | The inbuilt security feature is weak when compared to Tableau. The security update needs to be installed on a regular basis. | Extensive options to secure data without scripting. Security features like row level security and permission are inbuilt. |
| User Interface | To utilize excel to full potential, macro and visual basic scripting knowledge is required. | The tool can be used without any coding knowledge. |
| Business need | Best for preparing on-off reports with small data | Best while working with big data. |
| Products | Bundled with MS Office tools | Comes with different versions such as Tableau Server, Tableau Cloud, and Tableau Desktop. |
| Integration | Excel integrates with a few dozen add-ins and connectors | Tableau integrates with hundreds of native data connectors |
| Real time data exploration | When you are working in excel, you need have an idea of where your data takes you to get to know the insights | In Tableau, you are free to explore data without even knowing the answer that you want. With the in-built features like data blending and drill-down, you will be able to determine the variations and data patterns. |
| Easy Visualizations | When working in excel, we first manipulate the data that is present and then the visualization such as the different charts, graphs are created manually. To make the visualizations easily understandable, you should understand the features of excel well. | Whereas in Tableau, the data is visualized from the beginning. |
To conclude, Tableau beats Excel in major areas like the interactive dashboards, visualizations, capabilities to work with large-scale data and many more. Readers weighing a wider shortlist can compare it against other business intelligence tools and against Power BI before committing.
