Tableau Desktop Pocket Reference

Chapter 3. Connecting to Data

Upon opening Tableau for the first time, you’re presented with the Connect pane on the left side of the screen, where you can connect to various types of data sources. The data connections are split into four areas:

Search for Data

Allows you to connect to data sources shared to Tableau Server or Tableau Online as published data sources (discussed in Chapter 14).

To a File

Allows you to connect to flat data files such as Excel workbooks, text files (including comma-separated files), and JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) files.

To a Server

Allows you to connect to data hosted on a server such as Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, Amazon Redshift, and many more—which you can access by clicking the More option. 

Saved Data Sources

These data sources are shared to your Tableau repository for easy access. By default, this section contains two sample data sources that you can use for Tableau practice and for following along with this book.

As of this writing, Tableau Desktop has 83 native data connections in the Microsoft Windows version of the software—plus the ability to connect to third-party web data connectors, Java Database Connectivity (JDBC), and Open Database Connectivity (ODBC). Slightly fewer connections are available in the Mac version of Tableau Desktop. To get started analyzing a data source, click its connection type from the Connect pane, as shown in Figure 3-1.

To follow the examples in this book, you can click Sample – Superstore near the ...