Visualize Data with Tableau¶

Tableau is a commercial tool for exploring and visualizing tabular data.

In addition to making visualizations, Tableau makes it easy to select, filter, group, and describe your data in tables. This can be easier than the same operations in a Python REPL with pyspark or pandas.

This page describes various ways to connect Tableau to dsgrid data after you’ve installed Tableau Desktop on your local computer.

Install Tableau¶

Licenses are available to NREL employees. Go to theSOURCE, then IT Service Portal, Service Catalog, search for Tableau, and submit a ticket to get Tableau Creator installed (IT will install Tableau Desktop).

Parquet files on a local computer¶

This can be accomplished by connecting Tableau to DuckDB.

Copy the Parquet files to your computer.
Install DuckDB. You want the Command line Environment.
Install a JDBC driver and connect Tableau to DuckDB by following DuckDB’s instructions.
Create a view of your data as noted here. You can also import your data from Parquet files to a DuckDB database file if you prefer.
Use Tableau with your DuckDB data source.

Parquet files on an HPC¶

This can be accomplished by connecting Tableau to a Spark cluster on the HPC.

Follow the Spark-on-HPC instructions

CSV files on a local computer¶

Export the dsgrid data in Parquet files to CSV.
Load the CSV files directly in Tableau.