Starburst Documentation
Clients
  • Overview
  • Gather connection information
  •  Python clients
  •  Business intelligence tools
  •  SQL workbenches
  •  Data management tools
  • Trino CLI
  • JDBC driver
  • ODBC driver
  • Machine learning

    • clients > tableau > Tableau Server

    Tableau Server #

    Before you begin #

    Determine the connection information for your cluster, including its network name, listening port (or default port), and your login credentials.

    For Starburst Galaxy clusters, use the Connection info pane to obtain the connection information.

    Tableau data connector #

    You can connect Tableau Server to Starburst Galaxy or SEP clusters with a combination of a Tableau data connector file and JDBC driver. This method requires:

    • Starburst Galaxy or SEP 354-e or later
    • Tableau Server 2020.4 or later
    • Trino JDBC driver 386 or later

    Note that a Tableau data connector is not the same as a data source connector in SEP. The Tableau data connector is a software bridge between Tableau and the standard Starburst JDBC driver. The two files work together to enable access between Tableau and one or more Starburst Galaxy or SEP clusters. The Tableau data connector is a JAR file with a name similar to StarburstEnterprise.taco.

    The procedure to install and use the Tableau data connector depends on your Tableau version:

    • For Tableau Server version 2021.2.0 and later, the Tableau data connector is included. This allows you to select the Starburst Enterprise option directly from a Tableau menu following the standard data connector procedure.

    • For Tableau Server 2020.4 to 2021.1, you must first download the data connector file yourself, as described in download data connector.

    Connect to Starburst #

    For Tableau Server 2021.2.0 or later, follow these steps to connect to SEP or Starburst Galaxy:

    1. If Tableau is open, close it, and exit.

    2. Download the latest Trino JDBC driver.

    3. Place the JDBC driver file in the following location according to your operating system:

      Windows: C:\Program Files\Tableau\Drivers
      Linux: /opt/tableau/tableau_driver/jdbc

      Do not store more than one Starburst JDBC driver in the directory. Delete any older drivers when you update to a newer version. Connections to all connected data sources are made through the JDBC driver.

    4. On the Starburst Enterprise page of the Tableau exchange, click Download. If you are redirected to a login page, log into Tableau with a free login.

      Download the Tableau data connector file with a name similar to StarburstEnterprise.taco.

    5. Move the data connector .taco file to the following location:

      Windows: C:\Program Files\Tableau\Connectors
      Linux: /opt/tableau/connectors

    6. Restart Tableau Server and log in. Click Create, then select Workbook. In the Connect to Data pane, click the Connectors tab.

    7. In the list of server types, select Starburst Enterprise by Starburst. If this is your first time using this connector, a Connector Details dialog will pop up. Click the Install and Restart Tableau button.

    8. This opens a connection dialog:

        Tableau Connector login dialog

    9. Fill in the connection dialog with the following parameters:

      Field Value
      Server Hostname or IP address of your cluster.
      Port Port used by your cluster.
      Authentication Use the drop-down list to select among five options:
      • Username for a cluster with no authentication
      • Username and Password for a cluster with a password-based authentication method such as LDAP
      • Kerberos
      • OAuth
      • JWT

      If you select Kerberos, see Kerberos authentication. If you select OAuth, see OAuth 2.0 authentication. If you select JWT, see JWT authentication.
      Username Your username for Starburst Galaxy or SEP.
      Password (If selected) the password for the specified Username.
      Require SSL Select this checkbox if your cluster has any authentication enabled. When selected, the following field appears.
      SSL Verification Select an entry in the drop-down list to specify how rigorously the server’s certificate is to be validated.

      The values for SSL Verification have the following meanings:

      FULL
      Confirm that the certificate's validity is chained all the way back to a root Certificate Authority (CA).
      CA
      Confirm that the certificate is valid as far back as the included intermediate CA.
      NONE
      Confirm that the server's certificate matches the DNS name and private key of the server.

    10. When the connection is made, the Connections panel shows a list of the catalogs configured in your cluster.

        Tableau Connector list of catalogs

    11. To see the available tables, select a catalog, then a schema from that catalog.

        Tableau list of tables

    12. Select a table, or select multiple tables and specify relationships or joins.

    Additional authentication options #

    There are additional configuration steps if you need to authenticate with OAuth 2.0, as described in the following section. If you are using SEP, you may also authenticate with Kerberos or JWT. Configuration steps for those two authentication methods are also described in the following sections.

    OAuth 2.0 authentication #

    To use OAuth 2.0 to connect to Starburst, you must request and install a custom data connector file. Contact your account team for more information.

    If you have a custom data connector file, install it as described in the download data connector section.

    Kerberos authentication #

    When configuration a connection to a SEP cluster, if you choose Kerberos in the Authentication drop-down, additional connection options appear in the Connection dialog.

    Tableau Connector login dialog with Kerberos authentication

    The first four fields including Username are the same as described. The Kerberos-specific fields are described in the following table:

    Field Value
    Kerberos Principal The Kerberos principal to use when authenticating to the SEP cluster. If not set, the value is read from the keytab file.
    Kerberos Remote Service Name SEP cluster Kerberos service name. This parameter is required for Kerberos authentication.
    Kerberos Service Principal Pattern SEP coordinator Kerberos service principal pattern. The default is ${SERVICE}@${HOST}. ${SERVICE} is replaced with the value of Kerberos Remote Service Name and ${HOST} is replaced with the hostname of the coordinator (after canonicalization, if enabled).
    Kerberos configuration file path Path to the local Kerberos configuration file.
    Kerberos keytab file path Path to the local Kerberos keytab file.
    Kerberos Use Canonical Hostname Use the canonical hostname of the Starburst Galaxy or SEP coordinator for the Kerberos service principal by first resolving the hostname to an IP address and then doing a reverse DNS lookup for that IP address. This is enabled by default.
    Kerberos cache file path Path to the local Kerberos credential cache file.

    Use the same paths for the keytab and configuration file that are used after publishing a SEP data source to Tableau. If they are not specified, default locations are used.

    To troubleshoot Kerberos:

    • Set the JAVA_TOOL_OPTIONS environment variable on the Tableau host to include:

       -Dsun.security.krb5.debug=true -Dtrino.client.debugKerberos=true \
 -Djava.security.debug=gssloginconfig,configfile,configparser,logincontext

    • Check the Tableau log files that have jprotocolserver in their name, located in the \data\tabsvc\logs\dataserver directory on Tableau.

    For further information on configuring and troubleshooting Kerberos on Tableau, see:

    JWT authentication #

    You can enable the client token authentication page in the SEP web UI that exposes a JWT for use with any clients that support JWT authentication. To enable this page, set the following configuration property to true in the coordinator’s config.properties file:

      web-ui.token-copy.enabled=true

    When using the Trino CLI, specify a JWT as described in JWT authentication.

    When using the Trino JDBC driver, specify a JWT with the accessToken parameter.

    Starburst advantage #

    Remember that Starburst Enterprise and Starburst Galaxy are not databases. They are SQL query engines that can connect to multiple data sources at the same time. Each cluster can query multiple catalogs in a wide range of different data sources.

    Although Tableau is typically configured to access one specific catalog and schema, it is possible to query more than one data source with a single Tableau connection.

    To query multiple catalogs, select New Custom SQL in Tableau, and then reference the fully-qualified name of any table in the cluster using the full catalog.schema.table syntax.

    The following example query accesses four catalogs: postgresql, hive, mysql, and sqlserver.

    SELECT c.custkey
  , c.state
  , c.estimated_income
  , cp.customer_segment
  , a.cc_number
  , pp.cc_type
  , a.mortgage_id
  , a.auto_loan_id
FROM postgresql.burst_bank.customer c
JOIN hive.burst_bank.account a on c.custkey = a.custkey
JOIN mysql.burst_bank.product_profile pp on a.custkey = pp.custkey
JOIN sqlserver.burst_bank.customer_profile cp on c.custkey = cp.custkey
WHERE c.country = 'US'
AND c.state NOT IN ('AA', 'AE', 'AP')

    This approach is faster because all table access is managed by Starburst on the Starburst Galaxy or SEP cluster, and takes advantage of Starburst query optimization.

    Tableau is also capable of joining data from multiple data sources, but this approach creates an unnecessary workload on Tableau, and can negatively impact Tableau performance.