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5 Mandatory Requirements of a Tableau to OBIEE Connector

Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) is a traditional BI platform with robust data management capabilities. However, OBIEE falls too short of the user expectations from the data visualization and self-service standpoints .

Tableau is a powerful data visualization platform with strong self-service capabilities and a wide user-adoption.

Many organizations using OBIEE prefer connecting a modern BI tool (such as Tableau) to OBIEE in order to effectively complement its limitations in a bimodal approach.

A few organizations, despite moving to Oracle Analytics Cloud (OAC) are looking for ways to connect Tableau to OAC. It’s probably because a significant number of users are already well-acquainted with Tableau, and prefer sticking to it.

When connecting Tableau to OBIEE (or OAC), most organizations face a major challenge – choosing the right connector.

Here are the 5 important requirements of a Tableau to OBIEE Connector:

  1. Connect securely to both Subject Areas and Reports
  2. Reuse OBIEE joins and aggregations
  3. Support both Live and Extract queries
  4. Work seamlessly with Tableau Desktop and Server
  5. Compatible across Tableau and OBIEE versions

This list will help organizations to narrow down to the right connector. Let’s now take a quick look at each of these requirements.

  • Connect securely to both Subject Areas and Reports

The connector must enable the Tableau users to securely visualize data from both Subject Areas and Reports.

This requirement will equip the users to access the existing OBIEE reports as a separate dataset while providing the flexibility to tap into the Subject Areas data (and build a new report in Tableau) as needed.

  • Reuse OBIEE joins and aggregations

When a user connects from Tableau to OBIEE Subject Areas, the connector must retain the data relationships between the fact and dimension tables used for the analysis.

This requirement will ensure the user doesn’t waste time in recreating the joins and aggregations in the Tableau end from the scratch.

  • Support both Live and Extract queries

The connector must work seamlessly in both Live and Extract queries of Tableau, based on user preferences. This requirement is a standard expectation of the Tableau folks.

The IT teams must also educate the Tableau users about the best practices in choosing between Live and Extract queries.

  • Work seamlessly with Tableau Desktop and Server

The connector must provide the users with the flexibility to connect from both Tableau clients (Desktop and Server) to OBIEE.

Further, the connector must also enable the users to execute Scheduled Refresh of OBIEE data.

  • Compatible across Tableau and OBIEE versions

The connector must be compatible across different Tableau and OBIEE (11g and 12c) versions.

It is impossible for all Tableau users in an organization to use the same Tableau version, given the frequency of Tableau releases.

Hence, it’s very essential for the connector to eliminate potential showstoppers in the form of version compatibility issues.

Looking for a Tableau to OBIEE connector that meets all these 5 mandatory requirements? Well, your search ends here!

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Tags: OBIEE, Tableau, Tableau to OBIEE

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