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Tableau stock down almost 50%

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Re: Tableau stock down almost 50%

#231

Post by huherto »

IndianAstronaut wrote: post #226
physcab wrote: post #90

Tableau is a good product. I use it daily. There simply is no better alternative for quick ad-hoc, enterprise-level, intuitive graph and dashboard making. I've been at large orgs where we evaluated all the cloud services like Mixpanel and the ilk, but they are very different use cases. Tableau + Redshift (or Vertica but Redshift is way less expensive) is the typical BI tech stack. When I go a client or a new job and…

Tableau is not scriptable. 3 places I have worked are moving away from it because of this severe limitation. You have no control over what queries it writes and you can't easily add simple scripts to make things more seamless or performant, like say a quick scripted query to populate a dropdown menu.

What are they moving to ?

Re: Tableau stock down almost 50%

#232

Post by chris_wot »

cheeze wrote: post #109
brooklyndude wrote: post #98

I can hack d3js. Can crunch billions of records in a flash of the eye, can wrangle most any DB (NoSQL, et al) out there, why would I need Tableau? Answer: We want someone stable! Not some crazy hacker. Plus if we don't spend the cash, we don't have it in our budget next year. Oh, I get it now. :-)

Seriously? It's almost as if companies don't want to hire a badass hacker to generate a business report used by non-tech workers. Tableau has a huge place in the BI community, and the last thing that a manager wants is somebody hacking d3js to to create some visualizations.

$1,000 to generate a business report? That's how much a single Tableau license is going to cost you. You still need to train up the staff member to know how to use it (yes, it's probably the most intuitive BI tool on the market, but like anything it has a learning curve).

That's a lot of money for a business report.

Re: Tableau stock down almost 50%

#234

Post by nevi-me »

infinite8s wrote: post #224
nevi-me wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting approach! How practical is it though? I can export a tbwx or whatever the extension is, so that those who need the dashboards can use Tableau Reader. I'm however wondering if such model would work for us. The one thing that I like about Tableau is that its documents are XML, which plays nice with git.

Aren't their data extracts (TDEs) binary files?

Extracts are binary yes. If you're using a workbook without extracts embedded, you're working with an XML file. We do that most of the time. We only embed extracts when someone with a Tableau Reader license needs to use a dashboard. We normally keep those out of source control.

Re: Tableau stock down almost 50%

#235

Post by mrgordon »

rburhum wrote: post #222
mrgordon wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to offer a different opinion: I know a lot of people who have been switching away from Tableau or not choosing it and using a different solution (or multiple) instead

I evaluated 15 different similar solutions and trying to settle on one. Curious as to what your friends are switching to.

I've been meaning to write a blog post about this actually. Maybe I'll actually do it :)

I guess it depends what you're trying to do. What part(s) of what Tableau offers do you care most about? How big of an organization?

Chart.io is one product I evaluated that met our requirements. We cared most about collaborative querying and the ability to run templatized reports (including regenerating them via the API) so we ended up going with Mode Analytics

Re: Tableau stock down almost 50%

#236

Post by infinite8s »

chris_wot wrote: post #214
bayonetz wrote: post #180

Tableau is definitely a useful tool. Tried getting folks with Tableau skills in previous whoishiring post. The other positions I posted got a lot of response but not the Tableau-oriented ones. Looks like plenty of enthusiasts in this thread through. Where were you all? Hey, in the off chance you are Iinterested in working in Tableau at a think tank (RAND) send me (Chris) a note at dev.hiring@rand.org.

There's a reason for this. Unless you work in an organization that has already implemented Tableau, or is willing to take a punt on using it, then there is just no easy way to get skilled up on it.

Tableau Public isn't sufficient?

Re: Tableau stock down almost 50%

#237

Post by vehementi »

chris_wot wrote: post #232
cheeze wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously? It's almost as if companies don't want to hire a badass hacker to generate a business report used by non-tech workers. Tableau has a huge place in the BI community, and the last thing that a manager wants is somebody hacking d3js to to create some visualizations.

$1,000 to generate a business report? That's how much a single Tableau license is going to cost you. You still need to train up the staff member to know how to use it (yes, it's probably the most intuitive BI tool on the market, but like anything it has a learning curve). That's a lot of money for a business report.

Do you pay tableau $1000 per business report?

Re: Tableau stock down almost 50%

#238

Post by chris_wot »

vehementi wrote: post #237
chris_wot wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$1,000 to generate a business report? That's how much a single Tableau license is going to cost you. You still need to train up the staff member to know how to use it (yes, it's probably the most intuitive BI tool on the market, but like anything it has a learning curve). That's a lot of money for a business report.

Do you pay tableau $1000 per business report?

Nope. But if you work out costs, I think you'll find a dedicated developer on a contract may well work out the same amount as you spend on licensing.

Re: Tableau stock down almost 50%

#239

Post by chris_wot »

infinite8s wrote: post #236
chris_wot wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a reason for this. Unless you work in an organization that has already implemented Tableau, or is willing to take a punt on using it, then there is just no easy way to get skilled up on it.

Tableau Public isn't sufficient?

Is it able to do everything the client software can do?

Re: Tableau stock down almost 50%

#240

Post by click170 »

Eridrus wrote: post #178
click170 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experiences are very different. Many Linux services have a concept of reloading. If the config file changes you can send the running program a signal and it will re read the config. This is very useful for production systems. Tableau (9 at least) has no such concept. Change the email address it reports to? Restart tableau. Change the location of the SSL certificates? Restart tableau. Want to apply an update for ta…

What's the actual issue with restarts? Is the downtime due to a restart unacceptable? Is it that users lose application state when a restart happens? Just trying to understand since I've written software with the same restart to config workflow and would like to understand what causes it to be problematic.

If you run tableau in an enterprise environment you will likely have a lot of c level executives, global sales teams and more relying on tableau to be available outside of your local business hours. This means any maintenance needs to be planned and communications sent out to all stakeholders.

If reloading was an option then there wouldn't be downtime, and I wouldn't need to schedule a maintenance window for something as simple as updating an email address. The idea being that if there is a config error during a reload, the system just continues uninterrupted with the original config. If I have to stop the system completely in order to run the config sanity checks when it starts again, the potential for prolonged downtime is much greater.

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