Overview of Tableau

1.1 What is Tableau?

Tableau is a Data Visualisation tool that is widely used for Business Intelligence but is not
limited to it. It helps create interactive graphs and charts in the form of dashboards and
worksheets to gain business insights. And all of this is made possible with gestures as
simple as drag and drop!

What Products does Tableau offer?

1.3 Installation :
To work on Tableau, you need Tableau, right?

Out of the five above mentioned products, Tableau Desktop, Public and Online offer Data
Visual Creation.

Tableau Desktop

It is available in the following three formats :

1. Free trial for 14 days

2. If you are a student or a teacher, you get free access to the Desktop for a full year.
3. Purchase Tableau
Tableau Public

Tableau Public is purely free of all costs and does not require any license. But it comes with
a limitation that all of your data and workbooks are made public to all Tableau users.

Tableau Online

Tableau Online is the best option for you, if you wish to make your Workbooks on the Cloud
and be able to access them from anywhere.

2. Getting Started
Now that you have the suitable product installed and set up, I am pretty sure that your
hands must be tingling with anticipation to finally begin visualizing using Tableau! Well let’s
not keep you waiting then, go ahead and launch the tool.

2.1 Connect to the Data

You should see a screen similar to the one above. This is where you import your data. As is
visible, there are multiple formats that your data can be in. It can be in a flat-file such as
Excel, CSV or you can directly load it from data servers too.
You can see that Tableau itself offers some Sample Workbooks, with pre-drawn charts,
graphs, and other visuals. I would suggest going through these later for further exploration.

The best way to learn is to get your hands dirty. Let us start with our Data, which can be
found here. The data is that of a United States’ Superstore which is deliberating over its
expansion. It wishes to know the prospective regions of the country where it could and
hence requires your help.

The first thing that you will obviously need to do is import the data onto Tableau. So quickly
follow the below steps:

1. Since the data is in an Excel File, click on Excel and choose the Sample –
Superstore.xls file to get :

2. You can see three sheets on the screen, but we are only going to be dealing with
Orders here, so go ahead and drag the same on Drag sheets here :
2.2 Data Visualisations
As soon as you had imported your dataset, next to the Data Source tab near the bottom of
the screen, you immediately must have seen Go to Worksheet. A Worksheet is where you
make all of your graphs, so click on that tab to reach the following screen :
Don’t get overwhelmed by the various elements that you see here, we will cover them all
one by one.

Let’s start with Dimensions and Measures :

Moving onto Shelves :

Visualization in Tableau is possible through dragging and dropping Measures and
Dimensions onto these different Shelves.

Rows and Columns : Represent the x and y-axis of your graphs / charts.
Filter: Filters help you view a strained version of your data. For example, instead of seeing
the combined Sales of all the Categories, you can look at a specific one, such as just
Furniture.
Pages: Pages work on the same principle as Filters, with the difference that you can
actually see the changes as you shift between the Paged values. Remember that Rosling
chart? You can easily make one of your own using Pages.
Marks: The Marks property is used to control the mark types of your data. You may choose
to represent your data using different shapes, sizes or text.

And finally, there is Show Me, the brain of Tableau!

When you drag and drop fields onto the visualization area, Tableau makes default graphs
for you, as we shall see soon, but you can change these by referring to the Show
Me option.

Note: Not every graph can be made with any combination of Dimensions or Measures.
Each graph has its own conditions for the number and types of fields that can be used,
which we shall discuss next.

2.3 Various Graphs and Charts

So far we have pretty much covered the requisite theoretical knowledge. Lets finally begin
with some visualizations now.

I personally prefer to start from the shallow side of the pool, slowly swimming towards the
deeper end. So I would suggest beginning by getting an overview of the Superstore Sales
and Profit Statistics. That would include the Net Sales, the Net Profit and the growth of the
two measures, to name a few. Here is a gist of what we will be making :
From what can be observed, the net sales are on the rise, but the Profit is creeping up
slowly. We can also quite clearly see the peak Sales Months, which could be attributed to
various reasons. We can only know more as we explore more.

Before we start, there is one thing that I would like to recommend and that is you name
your Worksheets as being done here. Since I will be referencing them back and forth
throughout the article, it will be easier for you to follow.

Let’s begin with the simplest visualization, and that is displaying the Net
Statistics numbers. Tableau, being as smart as it is, automatically computes such
values under Measure Names and Measure Values. Follow these steps to make what is
called a Text Table :
 1. Drag Measure Names from Dimensions onto the central empty area so that you see
a Text Table.
2. Measure Names will be displayed automatically onto Rows, so drag it from Rows to
Columns.
3. Since we don’t really need Measures like the Row ID, Discount, etc, you can drag
them off from below the Marks Pane, to get something like this :

Note: Don’t get confused by the different colors of the fields that you see. Just remember
one small trick: Blue means Discrete and Green, Continuous.

So we have the net Sales and Profit values, let’s delve a little deeper by getting the Sales
and Profit Values over the years. Let’s make another, but a more detailed, Text Table :

1. Drag Order Date from Dimensions and Sales from Measures to Rows.
2. Right-click on the green Sales Pill, and select Discrete, in place
of Continuous, since we want the explicit values and not the bar graphs.
3. Finally, drag Profit on the ‘abc’ column to get :

4. Do the same thing for Monthly Sales and Profit Values, but this time changes the
format of Order Date, from Year to Month, by right-clicking on Order Date in
the Rows, and choosing Month, to get something like this :
We have just covered the numeric part of the Dashboard, but that is not its selling point. It’s
the Line Charts. Lets quickly learn how to make one :

1. To create the chart of Sales and Profit Growth, drag Order Date over
the Columns, Sales over Rows and then Profit over the formed Sales axis – so
 that you see an equals sign – to get the following :

2. Repeat the same to find the Peak Sales and Profit Months, but again change the
format of Order Date, from Year to Month, and get :
If you were to click on Show Me, you will see the different types of Line Charts that you can
make, and if you were to hover over each of them, you will get to see their Dimension and
Measure requirements too. In case you ever feel lost, I recommend referring to Show Me.

What is D3?
D3 stands for Data-Driven Documents. It is an open-source
JavaScript library developed by Mike Bostock to create custom
interactive data visualizations in the web browser using SVG, HTML
and CSS.

With the massive amount of data being generated today,

communicating this information is getting difficult. Visual
representations of data are the most effective means of conveying
meaningful information and D3 provides a great deal of ease and
flexibility to create these data visualizations. It is dynamic, intuitive
and needs minimum amount of effort.

It is similar to Protovis in concept but while Protovis is used for static

visualizations, D3 focuses more on interactions, transitions and
transformations.

D3 Features
 Uses Web Standards: D3 is an extremely powerful visualization tool to
create interactive data visualizations. It exploits the modern web standards:
SVG, HTML and CSS to create data visualization.
 Data Driven: D3 is data driven. It can use static data or fetch it from the
remote server in different formats such as Arrays, Objects, CSV, JSON, XML
etc. to create different types of charts.
 DOM Manipulation: D3 allows you to manipulate the Document Object
Model (DOM) based on your data.
 Data Driven Elements: It empowers your data to dynamically generate
elements and apply styles to the elements, be it a table, a graph or any other
HTML element and/or group of elements.
 Dynamic Properties: D3 gives the flexibility to provide dynamic properties
to most of its functions. Properties can be specified as functions of data. That
means your data can drive your styles and attributes.
  Types of visualization: With D3, there are no standard visualization
formats. But it enables you to create anything from an HTML table to a Pie
chart, from graphs and bar charts to geospatial maps.
 Custom Visualizations: Since D3 works with web standards, it gives you
complete control over your visualization features.
 Transitions: D3 provides the transition() function. This is quite powerful
because internally, D3 works out the logic to interpolate between your values
and find the intermittent states.
 Interaction and animation: D3 provides great support for animation with
functions like duration(), delay() and ease(). Animations from one state to
another are fast and responsive to user interactions.

Advantages of D3
 D3.js is a Javascript library. So, it can be used with any JS framework of your
choice like Angular.js, React.js or Ember.js.
 D3 focuses on data, so it is the most appropriate and specialized tool for data
visualizations.
 D3 is open-source. So you can work with the source code and add your own
features.
 It works with web standards so you don't need any other technology or
plugin other than a browser to make use of D3.
 D3 works with web standards like HTML, CSS and SVG, there is no new
learning or debugging tool required to work on D3.
 D3 does not provide any specific feature, so it gives you complete control
over your visualization to customize it the way you want. This gives it an
edge over other popular tools like Tableau or QlikView.
 Since D3 is lightweight, and works directly with web standards, it is
extremely fast and works well with large datasets.
The Power of D3: Few Visualization Examples
Bar Chart
Bubble Chart

What is QlikView?
QlikView is a business intelligence tool for data integration, conversational
analytics, and converting raw data into a knowledge base. QlikView offers
features for ad hoc queries and facilitates quick decision-making based on
easily accessible information. This software works on the associative model
and can go into any direction to search the answers.

the major benefits/ advantages of using QlikView

 It is simple and very intuitive to use the platform.

 Offers data visualization in a meaningful and innovative way
 Immediate response time with no restrictions on the amount of data
 Allows you to search across all data directly and indirectly
 The QlikView provides support for dynamic applications, dashboards,
and analyses, etc.
 Facilitates fast integration of data from various sources into a single
application.
 Helps you to Identify trends and information to make the most
innovative decisions.
 Allows you to access, analyze, and retrieve data from mobile devices.
 Provides a quick return on investment, because of a short
implementation period.
 Faster Development and Change Management
 Self Service Business Intelligence for end users.

Important features of QlikView

1) Associative Data Modeling:

QlikView works on an in-memory Associative Model. So you don't need "IT

professionals' If you can write SQL select Query and understand your data.

2) Platform:

QlikView is a windows only product, but it is genuinely optimized for 64 bit and
multiple processors.

3) Cost effective:

QlikView is a memory resident app, so it is a highly cost-effective option for

your organization.

4) Economical:
QlikView is very economical with disk space as the amount of memory
depends upon the amount of data you want for each application.

Other Important features

 Data Association is maintained automatically
 Data is stored in memory for multiple users, to offers a super-fast user
experience
 Data will be compressed to 10% of its original size
 Transparent reporting and Scalability with Data Integration
 Various forms of data presentation
 Fast implementation
 Unique Data Discovery & Global Search
 Collaboration
 Secure Working Environment
 Visual Analytics & In-Direct Searches
 Flexibility & Integrations
 Consistent reporting

History of QlikView
Now in this QlikView tutorials guide, we will learn about QlikView History:

 Qlikview was founded in Sweden in 1993 by Staffan Gestreliu and Bjorn

Berg.
 Qlik is a software firm based in Radnor, Pennsylvania.
 Earlier it is called "QuikView" as in "Quality, Understanding, Interaction,
Knowledge' later it is pronounced as "QlikView."
 First two versions were written in Excel using VLOOKUPs
 Today QlikView offices are located across the world with 1400
Employees, and it has the customer base of 28000 in 100 countries.
 Qlik established partnerships with famous IT companies like HP and
Intel.
 Today its user base has spread across 34,000 customers across 100
countries.
 It has over 2000 employees worldwide and more than 1,500 partners
around the world.
 As of April 2011, Qlik view had a market capitalization over $2 billion.
 In 2019, QlikTech gets the license from the RBI to operate a liaison
office in Bangalore.
Architecture of QlikView
Now in this QlikView for dummies tutorial, we will learn about the architecture
of QlikView:

The Qlik view architecture comprises of three main components, namely

 QlikView Server
 Qlik View Publisher
 QlikView Desktop.

All these components collectively help in designing, developing, and

implement the QlikView application.

Let's learn all these components in detail:

After installation Click on the Qlickview12 icon in your windows desktop, and
you will see this welcome screen.