Tableau Cloud (Online) #

Tableau Cloud can connect to Starburst Galaxy or SEP to access your data. This connection is established using the Tableau data connector. It uses a Tableau data connector paired with the Trino JDBC driver.

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 #

Tableau Cloud comes with the Starburst Enterprise by Starburst data connector included for every customer. This option can be used to connect to both Starburst Galaxy and SEP clusters, with a username and password as the authentication method. For SEP, 354-e or later is required.

Note that a Tableau data connector is not the same as a data source connector in SEP.

Connect to Starburst #

To establish a connection to Starburst Galaxy or SEP, do the following:

1. Log in to Tableau Cloud. Click Create, then select Workbook. In the Connect to Data pane, click the Connectors tab.

2. In the list of server types, select Starburst Enterprise by Starburst. This opens a Connector Details dialog that describes the data connector.

3. Click Install. This opens a connection dialog:

    

4. 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 three options: Username for a cluster with no authentication, Username and Password for a cluster with authentication enabled.
   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.

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

    

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

    

Configure an initial SQL query #

When using the Starburst data connector, best practice is to take advantage of the Initial SQL panel of the initial connection dialog.

Provide an initial SQL statement that is known to be valid and is cluster independent, such as SHOW CATALOGS or SELECT version(). Do not close the statement with a semicolon (;). For example:

Use of this panel is not required to successfully connect Tableau to clusters, but using it makes troubleshooting connection issues much easier. Without an initial SQL statement, if there is a problem connecting to the cluster, Tableau can fail to show an error dialog. This can leave the connection in a state where it appears to be successful but is unresponsive. With the initial SQL query in place, if there is a connection issue Tableau shows an error dialog that helps you diagnose the exact cause of the problem.

See the Learn More link in the Tableau Initial SQL panel for information on the limitations of the feature.

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 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.