This document provides an overview of Tableau, a data visualization software. It describes the main Tableau products: Tableau Desktop for individuals, Tableau Server for enterprises, Tableau Online for cloud hosting, and Tableau Public for free sharing. It demonstrates how to connect data and create workbooks and dashboards in Tableau. It also discusses the Tableau SDK for integrating visualizations and the Tableau JavaScript API.

1. Doing data visualizations with
Tableau
A beginner’s tale
Ray Schwartz
William Paterson University of New Jersey
April 29, 2016
CUNY Graduate Center, NY, NY

2. 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.

3. Tableau Products
Tableau Desktop
• A Windows application that comes in two editions (Personal and
Professional), and is most useful for analysts and business users.
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 Server
• Best 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).
Jones, B. (2014). Communicating Data with Tableau (1 edition). Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media.

4. Tableau Online
• A new hosted solution for storing and accessing data dashboards in the cloud
(requires Desktop Professional), this is geared toward consultants and
companies.
Tableau Public
• Tableau Public is a free application and visualization hosting service for sharing
of publicly available data on the Web (exists as a standalone Windows
application, or can be published to via Desktop Professional).
All four of these products incorporate essentially the same data visualization user
interface and VizQL engine. As you can see from this list, 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.
Tableau Reader
• A free Windows 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.

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

6. Limitations to 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.

7. Tableau SDK
Starting 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.html
https://onlinehelp.tableau.com/current/api/sdk/en-us/help.htm

8. Tableau JavaScript API
Use 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

9. 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.