A data warehouse such as Amazon Redshift, Google BigQuery, or Snowflake, is used to consolidate data from multiple sources in a single location. Data can then be analysed using a BI tool such as Tableau. Tableau and many other BI tools discover patterns and help visualize data to make it more understandable and boost the analysis process. These help in gaining a better picture of the metrics, trends, the user needs, performance, and hence play a key role in various data-driven decisions.
This article aims at answering all your queries about connecting Redshift to Tableau. Follow our easy step-by-step guide to master the skill of connecting Redshift to Tableau using various methods.
Table Of Contents
Introduction to Redshift
Amazon Redshift is a fully-managed petabyte-scale cloud-based data warehouse, designed to store large scale data sets and perform insightful analysis on them in real-time.
It is highly column-oriented & designed to connect with SQL-based clients and business intelligence tools, making data available to users in real-time. Supporting PostgreSQL 8, Redshift delivers exceptional performance and efficient querying. Each Amazon Redshift data warehouse contains a collection of computing resources (nodes) organized in a cluster, each having an engine of its own and a database to it.
For further information on Amazon Redshift, you can check the official site here.
Introduction to Tableau
Tableau is a powerful business intelligence tool used to turn raw data into an understandable format. It is a tool popularly used to visualize data and can be understood even by a non-technical user.
It creates visualizations with the help of dashboards and worksheets, helping users perform real-time analysis in a very fast and secure manner. It doesn’t require a user to have any programming skill or technical background to operate it.
For further information on Tableau, you can check the official site here.
Hevo Data, a No-code Data Pipeline helps to transfer data from multiple sources to Redshift and visualize it in Tableau. Hevo is fully-managed and completely automates the process of not only exporting data from your desired source but also enriching the data and transforming it into an analysis-ready form without having to write a single line of code. Its fault-tolerant architecture ensures that the data is handled in a secure, consistent manner with zero data loss.
It provides a consistent & reliable solution to manage data in real-time and always have analysis-ready data in your desired destination. It allows you to focus on key business needs and perform insightful analysis using BI tools such as Tableau and many more.
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Prerequisites
- Working knowledge of Amazon Redshift.
- Amazon Redshift account and clusters.
- Working knowledge of Tableau.
- Tableau installed at the host workstation.
Methods to Connect Redshift to Tableau
There are multiple ways in which you connect Redshift to Tableau:
Method 1: Using Tableau’s Redshift Connector
Tableau’s in-built Redshift connector conveniently establishes a connection with redshift. You can easily set up a data source and use Tableau to visualize your data to perform a fruitful analysis for your business.
This method requires you to install the Redshift ODBC driver. The ODBC driver allows Tableau to interact with the data stored in your Redshift clusters and hence perform an analysis easily. You can download it from the official AWS site here.
This method can be implemented using the following steps:
Step 1: Configuring Tableau’s Redshift Connector
Launch Tableau on your workstation and select Amazon Redshift from the connect column on the left. This will open a dialogue box where you need to provide the connection details for redshift.
To connect with Tableau, you need to provide the username and password for the desired database along with information about the server and port (5439 is the default port) which hosts your database.
Click on “ok” to establish a connection. This will enable a connection without SSL. To establish an SSL enabled connection, click the Require SSL checkbox before you sign in.
If you want to run a specific SQL command every-time a new connection is established, you can use the Initial SQL option. This will open a dialogue box, where you can specify your desired SQL query.
For further information on Initial SQL command, you check the official site here.
Step 2: Configuring The Data Source
The data source page loads up after configuring the Tableau connector and successfully signing in. This is how the page looks like:
Select the data source name option and give a unique name to the database you are using. It’s considered a good practice to have a unique name as it makes it much easier for users to identify the database from which data is being fetched.
To select the desired schema, you can use the schema drop-down list from the column on the left. You can also perform a text-based search to find the desired option. Now similarly find and select the desired table and drag it onto the canvas.
Click on the sheets tab to start analysing your data.
Step 3: Performing Analysis Using Tableau
To visualize the data, click on the data option from the desktop menu bar and then select a table from the list of data sources (usually found at the bottom of the pop-up).
Here we are selecting a table called clientid to visualize the data. Now from the menu bar, select dashboard and create a new dashboard. This will generate a simple bar graph for your data.
This is a simple example of how you can visualize data using Tableau. There are many ways in which you can experiment with data using Tableau’s interactive UI and easily manage your business requirements.
This is how you can connect Redshift to Tableau and perform a fruitful analysis.
Some Limitations of This Method:
- This method requires installing the Redshift ODBC driver beforehand.
- Tableau doesn’t allow you to modify the default driver parameters, however, new or additional parameters can be appended.
- Redshift is not a high-concurrency database. Performance can be affected by executing a large volume of queries at the same time.
Method 2: Using ODBC to Connect Redshift to Tableau
ODBC drivers can also be used to establish a connection between Redshift & Tableau. The ODBC driver can add a data source such as Redshift and then connect the Redshift instance with Tableau.
This can be implemented using the following steps:
Step 1: Installing Redshift’s ODBC Driver
Download the latest version of ODBC driver for Redshift on your system from the official AWS site. You can use the following links to download the driver:
Step 2: Setting up DSN for Redshift
Once the ODBC driver is installed on your system, launch it to start the DSN set up process. Choose the correct 64 or 32-bit version and select the System DSN tab.
Select the Redshift ODBC driver and click on configure. Carefully configure the connection in the DSN dialogue box.
Fill the necessary fields as follows:
- Data Source: Give the name of the data source you want to connect to.
- Server: Give the details of the server hosting your Redshift cluster.
- Port: Redshift uses the port 5439 by default, however, you can fill in the correct port number as per your Redshift cluster.
- Database: Give the name of your database.
- Auth_Type: Select the authentication type as standard.
- User: Enter the username in the correct format to connect with the Redshift cluster.
- Password: Enter your password here.
To set up SSL, click on the SSL options button. This will open a dialogue box called SSL Configuration. Select the authentication mode as disable and then click on ok to test the connection.
Step 3: Connecting to Tableau
Launch Tableau on your workstation and select other databases (ODBC) from the connect column on the left. This will open a dialogue box where you need to provide the connection details.
In the ODBC dialogue box, select the Redshift DSN from a drop-down list and click on ok.
Select the data source name option and give a unique name to the database you are using. It’s considered a good practice to have a unique name as it makes it much easier for users to identify the database from which data is being fetched.
To select the desired schema, you can use the schema drop-down list from the column on the left. You can also perform a text-based search to find the desired option. Now similarly find and select the desired table and drag it onto the canvas.
This is how you can use ODBC to connect Redshift to Tableau & run a powerful analysis.
Some Limitations of This Method:
- This method sometimes requires using third-party tools, which essentially is an extra tool that needs to be maintained. Such tools may even require some initial investment.
- The Redshift ODBC driver has limited support for stored procedures. It does not support parameterised procedure calls, that is there can’t be two or more procedure calls with the same name but different parameters.
- Redshift ODBC driver doesn’t support negative timestamps.
- Using the Redshift ODBC driver with Microsoft Access may result in failures. especially with the queries that use late-binding.
Conclusion
This article introduces you to the various methods that can be used to connect Redshift to Tableau. It also provides in-depth knowledge about the concepts behind every step to help you understand and implement them efficiently. These methods, however, can be challenging especially for a beginner & this is where Hevo saves the day.
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Tell us about your preferred way to connect Redshift to Tableau! Share your thoughts with us in the comments section below.