It’s not too often that I come across software that leaves me feeling like an eager child on Christmas ready to play with a new toy. However, I recently sat through a presentation of some of the latest visualization software that we’re using with some of our clients at Mariner and must say, I was totally blown away by what some of my colleagues had done with Tableau Software.
Tableau isn’t brand new, by any stretch of the imagination. It began as a a joint project in the late 90’s between Stanford University and the Department of Defense. The end result of this collaboration was Tableau Desktop which was released to the public in 2003. Well, it’s been through a few iterations and a couple of months ago, they made their new Tableau Public product available which allows anyone and everyone to create and publish Tableau workbooks for the world to see. See the sample dashboard below or visit Tableau’s website to see some of their visual examples.
Some of my colleagues suggest that Tableau could prove to be a true cube killer but I’m holding out on my judgment at this point. I still see a need for the ‘one version of the truth’ which cubes and KPI’s can help to provide. However, a lot of work goes into defining cubes and KPI’s and it doesn’t appear that using the cube will necessarily provide any clearer results
which would appear to be challenging when using Tableau as it seems to be heading back towards the idea of spreadmarts being built by various departments in an organization.
Granted, Tableau Public doesn’t give you all the whistles and bells of the full Tableau Desktop installation. One of the biggest hindrances is not being able to connect directly to SQL Server for data extracts. Tableau Public also limits you to 50MB of total usable space for your workbooks, but that’s not a good enough reason not to go and learn how to use it!
*** As a side note, one of the founding members and current CTO of Tableau Software is Pat Hanrahan, an Academy Award winner and also one of the original founders of Pixar Animation. Yes, the same Pixar that gave us classics like Toy Story (see Woody pictured above - Disney, please don’t sue), Monsters, Inc, Wall E, Up & more. As a father of 3 (soon to be 4), Pixar is like a family member to me. Pat was one of the original designers of the RenderMan Interface Specification…the foundation upon which all of Pixar’s films (and many, many other Hollywood films) rely!