When choosing an ETL tool for your business, there are several factors to consider. These include the specific needs of your business, the type and volume of data you need to process, and the resources and skills available to support the tool.
One of the key considerations is the type and volume of data you need to process. Different ETL tools have different capabilities in terms of the volume and complexity of data they can handle. For example, some tools are designed to handle large volumes of data, while others are better suited for smaller datasets. If you have a large amount of data to process, you will need a tool that can handle the scale and complexity of your data.
Another important consideration is the specific needs of your business. Different businesses have different requirements when it comes to ETL, and it is important to choose a tool that can support your specific needs. For example, if you need to integrate data from multiple sources, you will need a tool that can handle multiple data inputs. If you need to perform complex transformations on your data, you will need a tool that has advanced transformation capabilities.
In addition to these factors, you should also consider the resources and skills available to support the tool. Different ETL tools require different levels of technical expertise and support, and it is important to choose a tool that aligns with the skills and resources available in your organization. If you have a team of data engineers with advanced technical skills, you may be able to choose a more complex and powerful tool. If your team has more limited technical expertise, you may need to choose a tool that is easier to use and requires less support.
Choosing the right ETL tool for your business involves considering a range of factors, including the type and volume of data you need to process, the specific needs of your business, and the resources and skills available to support the tool. By carefully considering these factors, you can select an ETL tool that is well-suited to your business and can support your data integration and analysis needs.
Once you have considered the key factors and identified a shortlist of potential ETL tools, it can be helpful to conduct a trial or pilot project to evaluate the tools more fully.
This can involve setting up a small-scale ETL process using the tools on your shortlist, and then testing and comparing their performance and capabilities.
During the trial, you can evaluate the tools against a range of criteria, including their ability to handle the volume and complexity of your data, the ease of use and support required, and the overall performance and reliability of the tool. You can also involve key stakeholders in the trial, such as data analysts and business users, to get their feedback on the tools and their suitability for your needs.
Based on the results of the trial, you can then make an informed decision about which ETL tool to choose. It is important to consider not only the technical capabilities of the tool, but also the overall fit with your business and the resources and skills available to support it.
Once you have selected an ETL tool, it is important to ensure that it is properly implemented and supported within your organization. This can involve providing training and support to relevant staff, and establishing processes and procedures for using and maintaining the tool. By taking these steps, you can ensure that your ETL tool is used effectively and efficiently, and can support your data integration and analysis needs.
We have accomplished another milestone in our software, Canopys. Canopys v0.1.1 is coming soon, and I’m here to explain more about the application, the update, and the future.
Our software, canopies v0.1.0, is available on both Mac and Windows.
Also, we made Mac and Windows files available on the website; no sign is required to download the file. The sign-up is nested into Auth0, which handles all of our authentication. This is a significant step toward offering a file and gaining information from end users safely; we can’t see Auth0’s software managing any end users’ passwords and 100% of this.
We like auth0 for user authentication because it offers us a chance to focus on the product, not building and supporting a custom authentication solution, and this allows us to continue to drive innovations in the areas we feel are most important to growth.
Before we release the next version, please test our Canopys 0.1.0 Task Scheduler and a Calendar view similar to Google Calendar. Let us know what you think!
I know what you’re thinking: this sure beats Windows Task Scheduler, and that’s one of the many reasons we built this solution. We wanted to offer a more straightforward workflow for generating a scheduled event.
Canopy Update v0.1.1 Details
We are adding two major apps to Canopys: Data Hub and Data Viz. This means we now have a complete deployment solution. Task schedule, data storage, and analytics. All in one application.
Here’s a list of details we are adding.
Adding data hub
Adding data viz
Adding two charts, a line chart and a pie chart
The data hub connects data to visualizations. Look how we offer data storage with one button. It accepts JSON and CSV files. We do not plan on increasing the data inputs because we do not want to be a data connector development company.
A demo of data hubs.
After the data is stored in Canopys, you can build charts immediately. Data hubs feed your analytics; everything is contained in this one application. Data Viz is where we are demoing the creation of a chart. In the future, this area will be different.
A demo of data viz, with a pie chart!Demo of a line chart.
Below, please find more about the future of Canopys and FAQ.
FAQ and Future Thoughts for Canopy
How will Canopys offer Collaboration? The ultimate objective with any analytics application is sharing it with someone else and embedding the chart in the web or app. We know our perspective on this ‘requirement’ will begin molding how people solve problems, allowing us to change how people solve problems.
What does the future hold? In the future, there will be a place to build multiple visualizations, and we are making a means of sharing these assets or data hubs with your teammates or clients.
Our team of engineers, my wife and I included, are all video game players, and we are building what we believe is a video game version of tech we have grown to love and adopt.
We aim to generate a user-friendly multiple-player video game in a realm of highly complex single-player video games. This video game does not require a certificate or engineering degree to be successful.
Are we adding more charts? Yes, that’s the plan. We are looking at KPI charts next. Once we have 4 or 5 visualizations or charts, we will be devoting all of our focus to the more prominent features we want to ensure we do correctly.
Once you have Tableau desktop activated and running – open any data set. We use the Super Store Subset for our tutorial example and want to visualize the running average of profits.
We like using running averages to smooth out the lines and clearly show what’s happening per Category.
#2 Building a Sparkline chart – Make a line chart.
Usually, we would drag this part of the tutorial out, but if you’ve made it this far, you already know to double-click your measure, change the marks to a line chart, and have a date on the other axis.
If you need more assistance building a line chart, check out Tableau’s extensive Online Help.
#3 Building a Sparkline chart – Build a calculation.
We’ve seen a slew of scary-looking calculations over the years – especially regarding sparklines.
You don’t need anything complex for this portion of the work.
if last()=0 then MEASURE end
//that’s all folks.
You can drag and drop any table calculation you’ve generated into a calculation and be done with it! Here’s what our running average calculation looks like in the screenshot below.
Understanding Tableau Calculations is the first step to offering quality user experiences.
For the sake of the demo, let’s call your sparkline calculation spark.
Drag this next to your measure value – your current line chart in Tableau.
#4 Building a Sparkline chart – Dual axis your measure with your spark calc.
Next, to create the “sparkline in Tableau desktop,” you must add both measure values, dual axis, and synchronized.
Dual axis your measures.
Dual axis your measure with your sparkline calculation.
Right-click your measure
And click dual-axis
#5 Building a Sparkline chart – Synchronize axis.
Step 5 – synchronize the axis to ensure your upcoming sparkline chart is on point on your line chart.
If you don’t see your header, right-click on the measure and show the header.
Click on Synchronize Axis, and you will probably see the light now.
To ensure your sparkline circle lines up with your line – synchronize the axis.
#6 Building a Sparkline chart – Hide Indicator.
You’re nearly completely done! There’s an indicator showing your ‘lack of an else’ in your if statement. Avoiding the ELSE is essentially fewer computations for your computer and Tableau. Leaving off else lets us avoid bothering with writing extra code, too.
if last()=0 then MEASURE //ELSE 0 — not necessary end
And because there’s a clear void in the data, the indicator will appear – we didn’t break anything, and the product is working as intended!
The Tableau definition from every darn place on the internet.
Why did we consider this?
Because a lot of people are interested, what does Tableau mean?
We know the tableau definition means; visualizing and understanding data. We are Tableau consultants and have experience using Tableau Desktop and Tableau Server.
However, if you look at #tableau on twitter or instagram, you can see other people around the world use the word Tableau when speaking about artwork!
Learning about Tableau definition? What is this Tableau everyone is talking about? This is the company logo for a data visualization company called Tableau.
We remember the first time looking up the Tableau definition too!
Several different sources explain the Tableau definition throughout the internet. Google defines Tableau and also offers a visual representation of the usage of the word in three different formats, really spectacular insights. Google does the best job at not only defining the term but also offering analytics regarding the usage of the word since the 1800s.
tab·leau
ˌtaˈblō/
noun
a group of models or motionless figures representing a scene from a story or history; a tableau vivant.
What can we take from Google’s Tableau definition and analytics?
Something interesting to notice is even though the products of Tableau have proliferated the usage of the word, it has steadily declined and not seen an increase due to the companies usage of the name. Even though you’d believe it would be spiking because of the usage of the product, rather it’s steadily been in decline since 1980.
Thesaurus.com goes at this from the plural version, or I just clicked on the wrong thing, regardless let’s comprehend what tableaux symbolizes. Maybe it can help us paint a picture.
Tableau Desktop is a living data picture generator. It’s the life of your business.
We can reach that the usage of the word in google searches is due to the products evolution and growing user base. The founders of tableau did a superb job picking the name Tableau.
They chose a brand name from an old term that is declining in usage, defined similar to the products, and not impacted by the company picking it up. Genius.
A well-executed brand name pick, and something to take note of before deciding your next company name. Hats off to the founders at Tableau for doing their due diligence.
Tableau Server is the stomping ground for Tableau Desktop Dashboards! Also, welcome to the fastest growing business intelligence tool ever.
Tableau Server has very natural user functionality and security measures for any enterprise setup. We have experience implementing 80+ tableau servers and these are 1 week engagements, onsite, helping customers like Kroger, Boston Scientific, and many more. For more info ping our Tableau Consulting page.
Tableau Server is where end users come to consume reports, dashboards, administrate over metadata usage, and conduct data discovery.
Tableau Server is an application developed by Tableau Software. Tableau Server is self-service analytics at scale.
Share Tableau Desktop Dashboards on Tableau Server
If you need to share Tableau visualizations, with company data, across your corporation, Tableau Server is a great option. Tableau workbooks shared between desktop licenses, Tableau Reader, on Tableau Public, Tableau Online, and Tableau Server.
If you need to share Tableau visualizations, with company data, across your corporation, Tableau Server is a great option. Tableau workbooks can be shared between Tableau Desktop licenses, Tableau Reader, on Tableau Public, Tableau Online, and Tableau Server.
Tableau Server keeps your proprietary data behind whatever firewall you want or need; Tableau Online is a cheaper alternative that is hosted by Tableau Software. Tableau Public is a public space to share content, and we recommend not posting your company data on Tableau Public.
Last but not least, Tableau Reader can consume a TWBX workbook. It’s a free means of consuming packaged workbooks. Some companies use Tableau Reader as a free workaround to Tableau Server or Online.
Install Tableau Server Internally or Externally?
VPS and Cloud servers will always be a slower options VS Dedicated hardware. A dedicated machine can be a costly expense and also not as easy to scale more hardware on the computer. A double edged blade, choose wisely!
Tableau Server on a Third-party host?
Tableau server can be Installed internally or with hosting company.
If you don’t have a tech team, owning Tableau Server may be difficult. Tableau server is the option when you need to keep your install in-house or on a flexible deployment like Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, or Google Cloud Platform.
Can Tableau Server be used as a Data source?
Yes indeed!
Tableau Data Source, aka TDS, can be used as a data source. A major data governance buff to all database admins. A TDS is a viable replacement for database credentials if you’re ever concerned about any users locking up the database with corrupt queries.
Tableau Server is your Safe Place in Business Intelligence
Tableau Server is a safe place to share Tableau Dashboards, and Tableau Server can be used as a data source! Tableau Server as a data source leads to an interesting topic and great workaround for IT teams.
Server is the safe space for end users to consume approved data sources, without the need to put the end user in a development environment and give them database access, Tableau cut through the usual processes.
Tableau Server as a data source removes the need to give anyone database access; you can schedule refreshes at an appropriate time and give users access to the Tableau Server layer versus the database layer.
How Does Tableau Server Generate Less Support?
Tableau Server as a data source also removes support for end users running rogue queries.
A rogue query is built by anyone who doesn’t understand the database outage schedule. They run a query that will never end and lock up the data source. The rogue query runs during lunch or while they go home. Everyone comes back to work and turns out none of the database jobs worked, and everything is out of sync. What happened?
Less Data Downtime with Tableau Server
Your information technology team can plug this in, and hand it off to the business quickly. Everything is documented online, and if you follow all the steps everything will work! If it doesn’t work, contact the support, and they will help you out quickly and efficiently.
Less Downtime in Business Intelligence?
Less downtime would be great and a challenging business intelligence platform that requires countless hours of training is not beneficial to a fast paced company. Well, this is again where Tableau shines because Tableau Server is an easy GUI platform and you don’t need to be a developer to use it.
Tableau server is revolutionary because it’s not hard to use. Let your IT support the hardware and let the business support Tableau Server. TS now puts the company in action mode. And users can jump in and make instant traction on projects without the usual slow wheel of the IT teams.
Tableau server admins now work harmoniously with end users on a simple web portal. Now, on the front end, just plugging into the web portal, with a user experience easier than any business intelligence product software alive.
Tableau Server is Easy to Install. If you aren’t dealing with a fake team…
Tableau Server is a simple .exe, a few clicks, and installs in a few minutes if you’re passing minimum requirements. Because it’s simple, anyone is taking clients with fake teams!
Do you want to know who is fake? Contact us and we will show you on video chat!
Fake companies onshore and offshore are now pretending to take on clients, but the truth is they outsource their work and clients are starting to complain to us a lot about this new addition of fake firms.
Be on the lookout for blogs that do not explain impacts as we do below. Hundreds if not thousands are using spam metrics to inflate their rank but they are all offshore faking onshore teams. We’ve found several in the top 10 ranking across every top searches on Google.
Our opinion on business intelligence.
If any SAP architect, consultancy, or company ever sat down and did a single hour of making a change in the actual software. Then asked me to do it in Tableau – they would understand why I’ve made a living doing simple solutions in a beautiful product.
Instead of a six-month project to build a single data warehouse, we can generate powerful reporting suites in hours, and because of that I went and worked at the company immediately.
Why Tableau Server?
Tableau Server is a great business intelligence win if you want to avoid unnecessary technology solutions that constantly require support and remediation. And better yet, it allows for front end data warehousing and the expensive ETL suites are typically never necessary.
Installing Tableau Server the First Time
Okay, before you buy it, just test it out. Get IT involved, get networking involved, get database guru involved, and get the administrators taking over the install involved!
All failed projects surrounding the basics fail due to poor project management skills and lack of communication to the important parties.
Check with your IT team to determine if your environment can support it. Check with your local data guru to see if they can determine the connectivity between the data source, Tableau desktop, and Tableau server.
Things to consider before installing Tableau Server.
Let’s start with the first step. Do not rush into the setup clicking next-next-next. I’ve had to reinstall a lot of these after consultants and clients rushed through this process. There are a couple of things to consider before beginning.
Can Tableau Server be Installed on the same machine as the Database?
Tableau Server should not be competing for resources with a Database on the same computer. TS with the Database on the same computer is not a good practice.
Where Can I Install Tableau Server?
Install Tableau Server on the D drive and not the C drive.
Tableau Server native install suggests you install it under program files. Do not do that and always avoid installing software on the same drive as your operating system.
If you installed it on the C drive, it also installs content under the program data directory. /Program Data/ is a hidden directory. If you ever do a reinstall and want to put it on the D drive. Be sure to remove that drive.
Learn how to optimize images or Tableau Desktop is slower. Optimize images in Tableau Desktop before publishing to Tableau Server.
Before Tableau Server, have ground rules, bare minimums or maximums for image file sizes, similar to this image below, a stock image from pexels from years ago, edited in Photoshop, and optimized the image quality to ensure it’s not a large file on the frontend of my website.
Otherwise this web page would load slower, and cause the ranking to decrease.
Optimizing Images in Tableau Desktop is the true path to split second reporting and dashboards will load fast.
I recently optimized 2.9k image, that’s 3000 images, bulk automated optimization.. To help a local store e-commerce website. In an attempt to migrate and increase ranking.
We are transitioning from files that are 500kb to 1mb – down to sizes of <60kb. It helps reduce speeds of the dashboard if done correctly!!
The migration website was “so much better” the owner asked me to turn it off. The optimization of the images was recognized by the algorithm and it ranked better than their content.
Similar to rivalries in Tableau environments, the best dashboard gets the most clicks and those are often the dashboards that do not require a lot of waiting.
Learning Tableau desktop and Need to speed up your workbook?
Speeding up your workbook requires compressed images and optimized calculations.
So, ding ding, at the sound of the bell, let’s see who can optimize their photo the fastest!
Not familiar with Tableau Desktop – Learn about Tableau here!
Our Tableau Consulting team understands how important split second speed is with large vendors and small! Everyone wants split second speeds.
We consider workbooks like a website. We optimize every image to ensure the burden time is instant because our clients demand split-second response time – it’s 2017 for Chuck’s sake.
You heard me! How many workbooks do you think exists with un-optimized images today? That would be a fun project to scrape Tableau public, unzip each extract, open image folder, and check to see if the file size is >30kb.
That would be a fun project to scrape Tableau public, unzip each extract, open image folder, and check to see if the file size is >30kb.
We could aggregate what consultancies have the least optimized workbooks rather quickly.
These are micro wins, and Tableau desktop and server can handle your content without the extra work here. Optimizing images in tableau desktop is for customers who care about every aspect of speed, which is the majority of our current and previous work.
How does Dev3lop optimize images?
Pressing 4 buttons in photoshop you gain access to optimizing any image.
Photoshop is a great solution and there even compression apps on your phone that are 100% free.
Are you a consultant and have made hundreds of workbooks without optimizing images?
No big deal, you can automate images out of workbooks!
We use Photoshop, click the image to see a larger picture. Our client here has images around 500kb; we optimized it to 13kb.
Photoshop does cost money, you can google “image optimization” and free, you will find a ton of options!
Before we continue, here’s a few blogs that may interest you!
Four best practices or steps to optimize images in Tableau Desktop.
Optimize Images in Tableau Desktop – Like Rocky!
Do away with massive quality pictures, and optimize the image
Drop the ratio size if it’s massive, or your file will not be optimized
If you can’t tune it beyond 30kb – we prefer to find a better image – hero’s we look to stay under 100k.
Heroes are the big header image want to keep those from being pixelated, and people are more relaxed for those from a file size perspective.
Even little pictures need to scale down – we use photoshop!
A resized image is an unoptimized image
Optimizing Images Steps Explained
Optimize your image in Tableau with a color palette in mind! We use color palettes across every client engagement making awesome dashboards.
#1 Drop big quality pictures. They have free apps on the phone that optimize and compress image file sizes instantly or hire someone that uses photoshop for a living.
#2 If the file is bigger resolution than the dashboard, you’re asking your software to resize it for you, this is unnecessary – bring the file in at the appropriate canvas size.
#3 We may be biased here, but we do have a standard for production released content – we always peel back significant file sizes to avoid perpetually slow workbooks. Shaving off 1-second thousands of times a day is a big number.
#4 If you are resizing the image in Tableau Desktop, you should bring it in at that size to increase the speed of the workbook.
Your average enterprise website is <3mb per page. They never release images on their website before optimizing the file size. We prefer doing POC’s with whatever size and start optimizing the image in tableau desktop after everyone signs off on this being the right direction.
Just in case we want to swap pictures – we won’t lose a lot of work! Optimizing Images is Extremely Important, so put your gloves on!
Optimizing Images is Extremely Important, so put your gloves on!
Why are the images not being optimized for Tableau Desktop?
Optimizing is not on the forefront of product experts mind. Optimizing images in Tableau Desktop will help you in the long run. Do try to nudge your entire team to start making the content as lean as possible.
