Tableau Prep: Up & Running

Chapter 20. Outputting to a Database

When Prep Builder was originally released, it was designed to prepare data for Tableau Desktop. But because Prep Builder cleaned and manipulated data so easily and effectively, demand soon grew for the ability to output data not just to TDE or CSV files but also back to the original source of much of the information: databases. This was a significant departure for Tableau, as Desktop had always been a read-only tool, so allowing Prep Builder users to change data permanently opened up both opportunities and risks.

This chapter will cover when and how to write data back to a database and what to watch out for when doing so.

When to Write to a Database

As we’ve seen in other chapters, messy and multiple data sets can take a lot of time to prepare. If you have spent the time and effort to make the data suitable for analysis, then it is likely you will make it available to others or publish it back to a source where no one else will need to battle it again. This section covers some of the common situations where you might consider publishing to a database.

Clean Data

Dirty data is the reason we have to prepare data in the first place. If you have cleaned the data once, why not load it back to the source? Obviously, you must take care to not remove or filter data that would be useful to others. But if the data set is clean and ready for analysis, there are no potential downsides, and you have write/overwrite permissions on the database, then writing ...