Connecting to a SQL Server
by Matt Floyd, Ashley Ohmann, Ashutosh Nandeshwar, Jen Stirrup
Tableau: Creating Interactive Data Visualizations
- Tableau: Creating Interactive Data Visualizations
- Table of Contents
- Tableau: Creating Interactive Data Visualizations
- Tableau: Creating Interactive Data Visualizations
- Credits
- Preface
- 1. Module 1
- 1. A Short Dash to Dashboarding!
- 2. Summarizing Your Data for Dashboards
- 3. Interacting with Data for Dashboards
- 4. Using Dashboards to Get Results
- 5. Putting the Dash into Dashboards
- 6. Making Dashboards Relevant
- 7. Visual Best Practices
- 2. Module 2
- 1. Connecting to Data Sources
- Introduction
- Connecting to text files
- Connecting to Excel files
- Connecting to Access databases
- Connecting to a SQL Server
- Pasting from a clipboard
- Connecting to other databases
- Connecting to Windows Azure Marketplace
- Understanding dimensions and measures
- Changing data types
- Applying filters
- Merging multiple data sources
- 2. Creating Univariate Charts
- 3. Creating Bivariate Charts
- 4. Creating Multivariate Charts
- 5. Creating Maps
- 6. Calculating User-defined Fields
- 7. Customizing and Saving
- 8. Exporting and Sharing
- 9. Exploring Advanced Features
- 1. Connecting to Data Sources
- 3. Module 3
- 1. Getting Started with Tableau Public
- 2. Tableau Public Interface Features
- 3. Connecting to Data
- 4. Visualization – Tips and Types
- 5. Calculations
- 6. Level of Detail and Table Calculations
- 7. Dashboard Design and Styling
- 8. Filters and Actions
- 9. Publishing Your Work
- A. Bibliography
- Index
Although it is pretty easy to connect to Access, Excel, and other flat files, data is frequently stored on some sort of relational database on a server, such as on the SQL Server or Oracle. Tableau offers connections to various data stores too. Here, we'll focus on Microsoft SQL Server.
Security roles, server connections, authentication issues, port and firewall details, and other factors can create problems while trying to access data from a server. The solutions to these problems are out of the scope of this book but you should make sure that you are able to access the server database from the same computer on which Tableau is installed.
Once you have made sure you have access to the database server and the database, perform the following steps to connect to a Microsoft SQL Server table:
- From Tableau's main screen, click on Connect to Data.
- Under the On a server option, click on Microsoft SQL Server.
- In the Microsoft SQL Server Connection dialog box, enter the server name as shown in the following screenshot.
- Click on the Connect button under the Establish the connection option.
- Select AdventureWorks2012 as a database on the server.
- Under Define the connection, select Single Table and then Person (Person.Person), as shown in the following screenshot:
- Hit OK.
- Select the Connect Live option to connect to the SQL Server database directly.
Using the the Connect Live option in Tableau, we connected to a SQL Server database directly. This option allows users to create visualizations that will be refreshed as the underlying data changes. If connected live, Tableau will create results based on the SQL Server's settings, which are usually set to maximize performance.
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