Tableau Write Back to Database Extensions | Write Back Tableau

This article “Tableau Write Back to Database Extensions” is about ways to write back data from tableau back to database. Hope you will like this, if yes then please share it with others.

Introduction:

A business intelligence software with support for over 30 databases, automation, alerts, online publishable, easily shareable, huge data crunching ability etc.

No such functionality was available few years back, but now few 3rd party extensions are available that can make it possible for e.g.

userready – Tableau writeback extension
appsfortableau: WriteBack Extreme Extension
writeback4t
m2dot
tableaufans.com

Tableau Write Back to Database Extensions

Tableau is a business intelligence visualisation software that helps in

Property	Description / Comment
DBMS support	Tableau can easily connect with DBMS
Power of Tableau	Tableau is powerful than excel or googlesheets
SQL Requirement	It can work even without using SQL, but using SQL optimises the operation further
Tableau Connectors	Making connection to multiple databases supports over 20-30 different DBs
Warehouse	Can use it as data warehouse as well
E-Mail reports	Mailing reports on email
Alerts	Sending alerts on email
Automation	Automated refresh of dashboards data
Visualisations	Doing complex calculation and creating beautiful easy to understand visualisations out of it like bar chart, line chart etc.
Online publishing	Publishing it online for easy sharing

All the above features make it a world class one of it’s kind SaaS software.

Tableau write back brief:

Tableau write back to database is being in demand since quite a time and is launched after a long wait.

Heading	Description
Launch	With the release of 2020.3 version of tableau
Extension of Tableau	It’s a tableau extension for enabling user to write back to database
Databases Supported	Postgres, MySQL, Redshift, data warehouses like snowflake etc.
Tableau in-built database	Tableau don’t have it’s own in-built database
Importance	This topic is important because if tableau allows any such functionality, then one can easily do the complex calculation and can update that data back to database that too in an automated way.
Importance: Tableau Prep	Yes, once can write back to the above mentioned supported DBs using Tableau prep

So, it’s launched still a lot of people are not aware about it and so there is need to improve it’s coverage.

How tableau write back functionality is relevant today?

It’s highly relevant considering the business competitiveness in every field and need of updated quality data and insight requirement by everyone.

Relevance: Highly relevant to solve complex problems,
Write back capability: Write back complex data point achieved after calculations to tableau and also as tableau has scheduled refresh jobs available then probably they will provide such functionality for this function as well
Updated Data: Keeping crunched data upto date on databases
Data crunching capacity: Crunching of over 5-6 million rows of data from multiple databases, which is not possible on google sheets and/or excel

So, it is quite relevant and any solution direct or indirect will be of great help to solve tableau write back to database using some 3rd party extensions.

Advantages of tableau write back functionality:

Already, mentioned above that
- Complex data points write back to tableau and
- Achieving above point in an automated manner
- Multiple jobs done by same software hence cost saving
- Tableau features are quite reliable so less chances of error
- Tableau softwares supports much more data than google sheets or excel, so option to crunch and write back much more than possible, so an ability to crunch huge amount of data
- They always provide vast documentation with their features,
They provide good technical support to their clients and
Thirdly, lots of online vloggers pick this up as the users of tableau are huge, so this comes out to be good opportunity for them to attract traffic to their vlog.

Disadvantages of tableau write back functionality:

Every feature has certain advantages and disadvantages for e.g. in this the

Only disadvantage of this can be is that
- Deletion: If not used cautiously then one can delete or overwrite the already available data
- Hence, can cause data deletion which can be a big concern
- Load on Server: Load on server will increase so requirement of better machines, that will increase cost of operation
- Documentation: Not enough documentation available currently online

So, if the above mentioned problems can prove to be really lead to loss if somehow some data gets updated wrongly or gets deleted as that can be a big issue for the running business.

Will tableau focus on building anything like this?

Tableau has already built a solution to tackle this problem and apart from it there is margin for alternative solutions for it as well.

Existing solution: Tableau has already built some solutions for this
Alternative: One can use python to download the data and upload it back to their databases
May be or may not be depending on the requirement. But, considering the tableau’s reputation and vastness of their software it seems they might be focusing on it
Reliability: Reliability as tableau software is quite reliable in terms of service and uptime
Data crunching: Ability to crunch lots of data
Ease of use
Very less chances of software crashing
This will be a good feature that many will prefer as tableau already has good adaptation.

Hope, we were able to give a good idea about the topic.

Future research in the field -or- research going that is threat to this technology?

Further chances of research is always there in every field and so in this.

There is already custom solutions one can built using task scheduler and writing queries in python and using sql to achieve this. But, if tableau provides anything like this then there will be no need to work on that.
Tableau is providing some extension api based solution for this although.
Tableau already has a big user base and so adaptation of the feature will not be an issue.

Please let us know if we have missed anything we will try to further modify our article to answer the relevant question.