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I definitely am on the opposite side when it comes to Tableau. After you get over the initial learning curve you start to realize that everything in Tableau whe

I definitely am on the opposite side when it comes to Tableau. After you get over the initial learning curve you start to realize that everything in Tableau when working with calculated fields is a workaround. If your data doesn't already look amazing going into Tableau you're in for a bad time.

Twisell 6y ago
Was a big fan of tableau and we use it in production. It's a wonderfully exploratory tool. But the real pain start when you have 50+ workbooks and the underlying data model MUST introduce breaking change for whatever reason. There is to my knowledge no way to automate edition of workbooks. You are in for GUI repetitive soul sucking task. Bonus pain if "workaround" are involved. (Just have a look at the support forum... well not the good time they just revamped it... many answer involve 10+ manuals GUI steps) I still use it, overall still pretty good at what it does best. But I'm actively seeking alternative.
- lazyasciiart 6y ago
  There's this API for limited automation https://www.theinformationlab.co.uk/2016/11/23/tableaus-document-api-python-part-l/ https://www.theinformationlab.co.uk/2016/11/23/tableaus-docu...
- flatfilefan 6y ago
  Take a look at Qlik (view/sense)
- Twisell 6y ago
  Also forgot to mention it can't seem to work with array without ugliest hack.
- kfk 6y ago
  Have you checked Vega? Not as easy to build charts but it’s al done via json which can in theory be changed programmatically
  - jacques_chester 6y ago
    Vega is great, but I wouldn't think of it as an exploratory tool.
wenc 6y ago
Calculated fields are simply field level transformations in SQL. They aren't workarounds as such, but they are often used for workarounds. The most common workarounds are for folks coming in with an Excel mindset (where operations are cell-level) who want to accomplish something that is easy in Excel but hard in Tableau. For instance, almost everything in Tableau is an aggregation, so displaying a simple unaggregated table is actually really hard (you have to make certain fields Dimensions, others Values, etc). In Tableau, almost every operation maps to some SQL operation (in fact, you can peek at the underlying SQL query if you run the profiler), so mastery of Tableau almost always entails mastery of deep SQL concepts. Why doesn't Tableau make easy things easy, say like Excel does? The trouble is Excel’s reactive cell level operations don't scale. Tableau lets you connect to massive backend databases to compute and display multifaceted viz's with relatively high performance, and the only way it can accomplish this is to restrict itself to SQL-friendly operations. This difference is philosophically analogous to using for loops vs vectorized operations - the latter requires a mindset shift, and is less flexible/granular than the former but you gain a tremendous performance boost.
- wodenokoto 6y ago
  Thank you for your post. I have really struggled with some “easy” stuff in Tableau and gave up. But rephrasing it’s strengths and weaknesses around mindset and to think about it more like sql sounds like a good approach that I’ll try next time I meet it.

Twisell 6y ago

Was a big fan of tableau and we use it in production. It's a wonderfully exploratory tool. But the real pain start when you have 50+ workbooks and the underlying data model MUST introduce breaking change for whatever reason. There is to my knowledge no way to automate edition of workbooks. You are in for GUI repetitive soul sucking task. Bonus pain if "workaround" are involved. (Just have a look at the support forum... well not the good time they just revamped it... many answer involve 10+ manuals GUI steps) I still use it, overall still pretty good at what it does best. But I'm actively seeking alternative.

lazyasciiart 6y ago
There's this API for limited automation https://www.theinformationlab.co.uk/2016/11/23/tableaus-document-api-python-part-l/ https://www.theinformationlab.co.uk/2016/11/23/tableaus-docu...
flatfilefan 6y ago
Take a look at Qlik (view/sense)
Twisell 6y ago
Also forgot to mention it can't seem to work with array without ugliest hack.
kfk 6y ago
Have you checked Vega? Not as easy to build charts but it’s al done via json which can in theory be changed programmatically
- jacques_chester 6y ago
  Vega is great, but I wouldn't think of it as an exploratory tool.

wenc 6y ago

Calculated fields are simply field level transformations in SQL. They aren't workarounds as such, but they are often used for workarounds. The most common workarounds are for folks coming in with an Excel mindset (where operations are cell-level) who want to accomplish something that is easy in Excel but hard in Tableau. For instance, almost everything in Tableau is an aggregation, so displaying a simple unaggregated table is actually really hard (you have to make certain fields Dimensions, others Values, etc). In Tableau, almost every operation maps to some SQL operation (in fact, you can peek at the underlying SQL query if you run the profiler), so mastery of Tableau almost always entails mastery of deep SQL concepts. Why doesn't Tableau make easy things easy, say like Excel does? The trouble is Excel’s reactive cell level operations don't scale. Tableau lets you connect to massive backend databases to compute and display multifaceted viz's with relatively high performance, and the only way it can accomplish this is to restrict itself to SQL-friendly operations. This difference is philosophically analogous to using for loops vs vectorized operations - the latter requires a mindset shift, and is less flexible/granular than the former but you gain a tremendous performance boost.

wodenokoto 6y ago
Thank you for your post. I have really struggled with some “easy” stuff in Tableau and gave up. But rephrasing it’s strengths and weaknesses around mindset and to think about it more like sql sounds like a good approach that I’ll try next time I meet it.