SQL Data Modeling Guide — Chapter 6

Install Tableau

Install Tableau, as described in the Tableau documentation.

Tableau has select * as the default query for the initial connection. To improve performance between Tableau and MarkLogic, follow the instructions below.

In the path shown below, save the following xml structure as odbc-marklogic.tdc (the name does not matter, but extension has to be .tdc):

C:\Users\**\Documents\My Tableau Repository\Datasources

If installing the 32-bit ODBC driver, the contents of the odbc-marklogic.tdc file should look like the following:

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8' ?>

<connection-customization class='genericodbc' enabled='true' version='10.2'>
   <vendor name='MarkLogic' />
   <driver name='MarkLogic SQL (X86)' />
 <customizations>
   <customization name='CAP_QUERY_TOP_0_METADATA' value='yes' />
   <customization name='CAP_ODBC_METADATA_SUPPRESS_SELECT_STAR' value='yes' />
   <customization name='CAP_QUERY_WHERE_FALSE_METADATA' value='no' />
   <customization name='CAP_CREATE_TEMP_TABLES' value='no' />
 </customizations>
</connection-customization>

Connect Tableau to MarkLogic Server

This section describes how to connect Tableau to MarkLogic Server.

The procedure described in this section assumes you have first installed the MarkLogic ODBC driver and configured it as an ODBC data source on the client server, as described in Installing and Configuring the MarkLogic Server ODBC Driver.

1. Open Tableau and click Other Databases (ODBC):

   

2. In the Other Databases (ODBC) window, select MarkLogicSQL from the DSN pulldown window. Click Connect:

   

3. In the Connection Attributes portion of the Other Databases (ODBC) window, enter the name of your MarkLogic server, the port number of your ODBC App Server (5432, in this example), and login credentials (the Database field is ignored). Click Sign In:

   

4. In the Data Source window, click Select Schema, then on the magnifying glass icon and select your schema (in this example, 'main') from the menu:

   

Add Tables to Tableau Workbook

After successfully connecting Tableau to MarkLogic Server, you can add the defined views, as tables, to your workbook.

1. In the Data Source window, click Select Table, then on the magnifying glass icon to populate the menu below with the views from your schema:

   

2. Drag the views in the Tables menu to the canvas. In this example, the employees view is dragged to the workbook:

   

3. Drag another view to the workbook. In this example, the expenses view is dragged to the canvas and joined with employees with an inner join. The results are shown below.

1. At the top of your canvas, select the desired Connection type:

   

   Connection Type	Description
   Live	Creates a direct connection to your data. As reports are generated, data is pulled live from the data source. The speed of your data source will determine performance.
   Extract	Imports the entire data source into Tableau's fast data engine as an extract. The extract is saved with the workbook.

2. At the bottom of the Tableau window, navigate to Sheet1.

   

3. In the Sheet1 window, drag EmployeeID, FirstName and LastName from the employees view in the Dimensions pane to the Rows field. Drag Category and Amount from the expenses view to the Rows field. You should see your data stored in MarkLogic Server displayed in table on the right.