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Is Tableau Dead?

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Re: Is Tableau Dead?

#81

Post by cpsempek »

oxfordmale wrote: post #20

I hate Tableau with a passion. The main bugbear is that viewers can't see the SQL code the dashboards execute. I am no fan of Looker, but the "Explore here" allows other users to see the SQL and tweak it if needed. Most intermediate data stakeholders are confident enough to modify the where clause to suit their custom needs, allowing them to self-serve. The licensing costs are prohibitive, too. It is almost unafforda…

I also hate Tableau for this reason. However, it's a bad pattern to be storing custom SQL in a BI tool IMO. Better to create tables or views which hold your report logic and are stored in git. That way you're decoupling defining metrics and business logic from your BI tool, making that information queryable in your warehouse by users or other tools (and easily viewable!).

Re: Is Tableau Dead?

#82

Post by justin66 »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #11
MissTake wrote: post #2

Our renewal got Shanghaied by an extremely greedy and over zealous sales rep who injected himself between us and our renewals reps, and wanted to turn a sub $80k renewal into damn near $200k this year and $300k next. Needless to say it got nowhere fast and, by the time he gave up and threw us “back” to renewals, the damage had been done. We elected to do what they thought was unthinkable and we just walked away. My o…

One can safely assume Salesforce has very well made internal Tableau visualizations of Salepserson performance. That sort of failure would almost certainly show up with crisp drop shadows. It is a shame, however, that the behavior of the sales rep probably made the renewals rep's chart look bad if not worse.

> It is a shame, however, that the behavior of the sales rep probably made the renewals rep's chart look bad if not worse.

Is the fate of commissioned salespeople to be eaten by other commissioned salespeople.

Re: Is Tableau Dead?

#83

Post by Anon_Admirer »

wokwokwok wrote: post #52
Anon_Admirer wrote: post #29

There seems to be a lot of shade here at Power BI. Forgetting Microsoft’s dominance in the market, I’ve much appreciated Microsoft’s approach to data visualization which is soft on the visuals, but gradually improving them and hard on the programming aspects, such as Power Query or “M” and Data Analysis Expressions (“DAX”). The former they have opened to anyone to create via Power BI visuals SDK. The reason I say thi…

Wow, you really love PoweBI huh. I’ve done the microstrategy, powerbi, tableau dance for about 3 years and I wasn’t impressed. It’s easy to do easy things and hard to do hard things. The versioning is quite bad. The powerBI gateways are complex to maintain, expensive and incomprehensible when they don’t work (update failed? Good luck! Out of quota? Times out? Haha…) DAX is pretty; but when it’s big, it’s spaghetti. W…

> Wow, you really love PoweBI huh.

Wouldn’t say love but prefer over the alternatives. I still find the user interfaces could have been designed better if they were not so focused on matching like other office products. I wish it was as nice as it is to wireframe in Figma. The ribbon and other office elements are dated and not as conducive to todays standard where good collaboration tools is helpful to bringing developers and designers together while being efficient.

> The versioning is quite bad.

Agreed, but it’s got better over the years. Especially in the most recent release of Power BI projects. I feel that Microsoft’s strategy is to provide this new format and let independent developers create versioning tools while they take on higher priorities. They have often taken things those developers have created and incorporated them into their products. As with all the product requests, you got to pick your battles - I don’t defend which ones they choose. I’m just happy to finally have GIT versioning.

> DAX is pretty; but when it’s big, it’s spaghetti. Worse than SQL.

I agree 100%. I liked how Tableau had a more SQL feeling syntax. I luckily come from an Excel heavy background so adopting was easier than some. I find that most of the verbose code is due to dealing with row and filter contexts which in DAX can be frustrating. Debugging is difficult… I can go on. With that said, others have offering differing opinions (see: https://www.sqlbi.com/blog/alberto/2020/06/20/7-reasons-dax-...). All I can say is that I feel there is probably could have been a better syntax / functional language then the one created to produce the same functionality and maintain independence.

Re: Is Tableau Dead?

#84

Post by jherskovic »

I was a big Tableau champion at our org. Lots of dashboards, led a user group, was the go-to expert for a while (think 10 years ago). For us, what killed it was the pricing. They got very greedy very fast. Justifying a 4-digit license, per desktop, was the real killer. We just couldn’t, so the creation of dashboards became a tool of a “priesthood” of sorts. Everyone loved the way the dashboards looked and performed, but people very, very rarely used them. After years trying, I can remember ONE decision that was sorta-adopted based on a dataviz.

PowerBI are their lunch because it was “free” with the rest of our Microsoft stuff, so everyone could make the shiny dashboards no one uses instead of just a few.

In some cases we just wrote our own d3-based visualizations. It was easier than dealing with the constant licensing headaches Tableau brought.

Re: Is Tableau Dead?

#85

Post by sergiotapia »

PanMan wrote: post #63
CSMastermind wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heroku is one of those things that if someone tells me their still on it without a plan to migrate I question the executive leadership at their company. Shade of its former self, expensive, and there are plenty of better options. Really seems like the company is in zombie mode until it's eventual slow demise.

I agree.. but I'm surprised how little Heroku alternatives have popped up yet.. There is new contestants, mostly focussed on more global deploys, but no "Heroku but maintained" that I know of.. yet.

There's a ton, sharing in case you've never seen them.

In a linear graph from "Heroku" to "VPS do-it-yourself":

     |------------------------------------------------------------|
    Heroku    Render     Railway     NorthFlank    Fly      DigitalOcean
That's how I would place them from easiest to hardest. Of course DigitalOcean is not a PaaS but bear with me.

I use Render for https://www.gamedrop.gg/ and it works really well for me, very hands off.

Re: Is Tableau Dead?

#86

Post by alexpetralia »

c-linkage wrote: post #73
monkeydust wrote: post #54

I was an early Tableau adopter and promoter in my org many years back. At the time the incumbent, Qliksense, was lagging badly and there was genuine grass roots support for Tableau as our next gen BI tool. Adoption grew significantly and people were happy...for a while. I remember reaching out the founder/CEO at the time and getting responses back. It was great. Fast forward today and its different, over time Tableau…

Speaking of too many dashboards, my opinion at this point is that Tableau is where data goes to die. I have so many dashboards that are created in my organization but each dashboard gets one or less views per month. No one ever looks at these dashboards that get created. My feeling is that these dashboards were probably more like one-time reports that someone decided to automate. But there's definitely a sense of Tab…

Do most data-driven decisions need to be made daily?

Sometimes you just need to see the data once or month or once a quarter to make a decision. Sometimes, you just need to see the data once! (an ad hoc analysis in Excel)

We should think of the rate at which we need to act on decisions, and it need not always be a frenetic "now, now, now"

Re: Is Tableau Dead?

#87

Post by prometheus76 »

stuckkeys wrote: post #53
MissTake wrote: post #2

Our renewal got Shanghaied by an extremely greedy and over zealous sales rep who injected himself between us and our renewals reps, and wanted to turn a sub $80k renewal into damn near $200k this year and $300k next. Needless to say it got nowhere fast and, by the time he gave up and threw us “back” to renewals, the damage had been done. We elected to do what they thought was unthinkable and we just walked away. My o…

Just out curiosity, what did you end up replacing it with? Looking to shop for a client. They were hyped on Tableau.

We're a Power BI house with eight companies in a holding company. Power BI also has a high-security option, which is essential for us for security compliance requirements on our government contracts. We also have a blanket license so everyone can see the dashboards, and we're about to upgrade to Premium company-wide.

It took some time for me to switch from Excel paradigm to Power BI paradigm, but once it clicked, I've never looked back.

Re: Is Tableau Dead?

#88

Post by prometheus76 »

ako wrote: post #10
kimi wrote: post #7

I don't know jack about Tableau, but if the alternative is Power BI, I got a feeling they may be safe. My current company sells telephony and call-center analytics for MS Teams using our software, and during pre-sales meeting, one of the staple questions is "So we can avoid Power BI entirely?" followed by a minor thanksgiving ceremony and presentation of credit card. I get a feeling it's not too dear to the hearts of…

Why do they want to avoid PowerBI?

I'm going to hazard a guess based on my experience of being the one who brought it to my current employer after learning it at a previous employer: it's really hard to understand for awhile, especially coming from Excel. The paradigm required to build anything more than SUM or AVERAGE can be very unintuitive and feels almost like black magic.

It takes a lot of trial and error and patience to finally grasp how Power BI handles calculations if you are used to the freedom of Excel.

That being said, once it clicks, it feels like you are a magician, and you can do really advanced analytics on giant tables, which is great.

We pull a bunch of data out of the guts of MS Project 2010 and do a lot of custom analysis on it. It took about two years to go from scratch to a set of reports that served everyone's needs that also required minimal maintenance.

Then we got purchased by a larger company, so now the work is in rolling out a similar set of reports for the sister companies, as well as rolling them up into corporate-wide reports. It's a lot of fun.

Re: Is Tableau Dead?

#89

Post by jncfhnb »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #11
MissTake wrote: post #2

Our renewal got Shanghaied by an extremely greedy and over zealous sales rep who injected himself between us and our renewals reps, and wanted to turn a sub $80k renewal into damn near $200k this year and $300k next. Needless to say it got nowhere fast and, by the time he gave up and threw us “back” to renewals, the damage had been done. We elected to do what they thought was unthinkable and we just walked away. My o…

One can safely assume Salesforce has very well made internal Tableau visualizations of Salepserson performance. That sort of failure would almost certainly show up with crisp drop shadows. It is a shame, however, that the behavior of the sales rep probably made the renewals rep's chart look bad if not worse.

Sales teams often punish reps for many things out of their control. It’s pretty dumb.

Re: Is Tableau Dead?

#90

Post by dsaavy »

codeulike wrote: post #57

The five stages of grief Denial: " Tableau will become a tool in the Salesforce toolbox that major players will continue to use. " Anger: " Salesforce executives mentioning Tableau less than Slack or Mulesoft on their public calls ... Meanwhile, Microsoft's Power BI is on a hot streak. " Bargaining: " I believe it'll be a consistent player at large institutions who typically go through complex project and procurement…

Haha this is spot on.
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