Tableau provides a rich feature set, in particular Tableau Server/Online data storage. It comes easy and cheap to use, allowing for a quick start and fast growth. However, it is no permanent storage solution. We painfully experienced this first hand at beginning of the year. We provide a quick overview on how we initially set up our Tableau infrastructure and how this limited us. Focus will be on steps we came up with to improve our working environment. Talk will be targeted at companies relying on Tableau environment. We will go through the process of automatically duplicating your Tableau data sources to Amazon Redshift. We will introduce our python toolchain for daily management. It enables you to be more flexible with scaling your data, being sure about backup strategies and many more points. http://ontour15.tableau.com/berlin/schedule/tuesday#session-1456

1. BACKING UP OUR TABLEAU -
STEPS TOWARDS A
RELIABLE REPORTING SOLUTION
Sergii Khomenko, Data Scientist
Dr. Konstantin Wemhöner, Head of Business Intelligence

2. WHAT
IS
STYLIGHT
?
A S H O R T
I N T R O D U C T I O N
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3. CONTENT meets COMMERCE
N
E
W
The best place to discover & shop fashion.
STYLIGHT.DE
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4. GLOBAL INSPIRATION – LOCAL COMMERCE
A V A I L A B L E I N 1 4 C O U N T R I E S
Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Netherlands, France, Italy, Sweden, UK,
Spain, Australia, Brazil, US, Norway, Belgium
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5. STYLIGHT ON THE GO
W H E N E V E R .
W H E R E V E R .
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6. PROUD TO BLEED PURPLE
• Founded: 2008 in Munich
• OFFICES: Munich, London, New York
• Investors: Holtzbrinck Ventures,
Tengelmann Ventures, Seven Ventures
• Business Partners: 350+ partner shops
worldwide with 6000+ brands
• Total Employees — 160+
(over 19 nationalities from 4 continents)
F A C T S A N D F I G U R E S
TOTALN°OFEMPLOYEES
50
100
150
201520142013201220112010
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7. GROSS MERCHANDISE VALUE
$360 MILLION
$2 70 MILLION
$175 MILLION
$50 MILL2011
2012
2013
2014
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8. BI SETUP BEFORE OUTAGE

9. SETUP OF OUR REPORTING WORKFLOW
Department
Business Intelligence
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10. OUR FIRST “DWH”: TABLEAU ONLINE
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11. WHY WE CHOSE TABLEAU ONLINE?
• Easy to start using
• Works for free
• All data sources in one place
• Unified routine
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12. WHY WE CHOSE TABLEAU ONLINE?
• combination of local and online/cloud sources
(Google Analytics, JDBC…)
• Sharing cross-continents - instantaneous
• easy distribution of reports with Tabcmd
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13. SAMPLE REPORTS FROM OUR
ENVIRONMENT
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14. SAMPLE REPORTS FROM OUR
ENVIRONMENT
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15. 3 TYPES OF DATA SOURCES
static snapshot incremental
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16. HOW DATA SOURCES WERE UPDATED
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17. LOADING AND MONITORING
BEFORE OUTAGE
• 25 workbooks online with 119 views from
80 data sources
• Scheduled mails
• All refreshes scheduled manually
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18. AND THEN IT CRASHED ...
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19. BACK FROM CHRISTMAS …
AND EVERYTHING CRASHED
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20. SERVER OUTAGE JANUARY 2015
• Started with empty scheduled mail reports
(9th Jan)
• Monday >80% of views not working
• No clear communication from Tableau
• Server outage during our scheduled refreshes
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21. SERIOUS DOWNTIME OF REPORTING
INFRASTRUCTURE
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22. 3 TYPES OF DATA SOURCES AND HOW THEY
WERE AFFECTED
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23. FIRST THINGS FIRST: FIREFIGHTING
Replacement of all data sources in workbooks
Open Local copy New extract Replace
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24. HOW TO REBUILD A BROKEN DATA SOURCE?
Biggest Issue: Workbooks could not be opened
due to broken data source
Understand how a Tableau data extract is build
Find a way to extract and recreate the essential parts
of a TDE
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26. THE INSIDE OF A TABLEAU DATA SOURCE FILE
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27. RECREATING THE FILES CONTENT
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28. ISSUES, PLANS
• We have all DS accessible
• We know where data comes from
• Structure re-creation
• Migration without any manual input
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29. DWH WITH
AMAZON REDSHIFT

30. IMPROVING OUR TECHNICAL SETUP
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31. GENERATION OF DATA INPUT FOR REDSHIFT
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32. SERVER-SIDE MONITORING OF DATA REFRESHES
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33. TRACKING DWH PERFORMANCE
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34. BENEFITS
• Control over backups
• Control over refreshes
• Scale DWH up to petabyte scale
• Easy to add new ETL stages (EMR)
• More open for new challenges
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35. MONITORING INSTALLED FOR ALL REFRESHING
DATA SOURCES
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36. ADDITIONAL ERROR LOGGING WITH LOGGLY
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37. OUTCOME &
FUTURE PLANS

38. POSITIVE OUTCOMES
• Number of data sources reduced by 30%
• Speed increase by using RedShift factor >100
• Scalable infrastructure for growing company
• More flexible connection of tables via RedShift
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39. IMPROVING IT TO THE NEXT LEVEL!
• Open Source our Python tools
• Internal DWH mapping server
• Flexible to integrate new things
• Google Spreadsheet integration
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40. HOW TO REACH US
T O O L S , T U G M U N I C H
Sergii Khomenko
sergii.khomenko@stylight.com
@lc0d3r
G E N E R A L I N F O , B I J O B S
Dr. Konstantin Wemhöner
konstantin.wemhoener@stylight.com
@kwarks85
STYLIGHT Engineering: @CodeTailors
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41. STYLIGHT.de Seite 41 / 42

42. STYLIGHT
Nymphenburger Straße 86
80636 Munich, Germany
Join us on Facebook: facebook.com/stylight
Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/stylight
Follow us on Instagram: instagram.com/stylight
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