I have a few questions about Tableau and how dynamic it is:
Changes to the data in a relational db requires refresh, no events of refresh or something else?
Can we have visualizations at a runtime, e.g if we have some filters and we select some of them are the visualizations going to be updated?
If I have some API and want it to accept some params from the users and pass them to Tableau for querying, this would be a use case.
Tabeau queries your data source directly. Changes in your source are visible whenever Tableau launches a query.
There is no "in memory" database to be refreshed, but there are high performance extracts that can function as a buffer between your data source & Tableau, sometimes approaching in memory performance.
A "new" query to get fresh data is sent when:
Something changes, for example the user filters a view (see question 2 :-) )
The workbook or dashboard is opened
The refresh button is hit
Another periodic refresh is launched
A programmatic event triggers a refresh
It is possible to launch a reload of the extract or a new query based on a trigger. You could create a command line script on the server that is triggered by your source system to reload (using TABCMD - Tableau command line interface or TabPy - Tableau Python integration amongst other thing). Or you could use the API.
Yes, the visualizations will be updated each time you select a filter.
This behavior is very customizable, you have a lot of control on what filter refreshes what viz, even in the front end only.
EDITED for clarity
Related
I need to extract some data from my client's SAP ECC (the SUIM -> Users by Complex Selection Criteria -program RSUSR002)
Normally I give them a table of values that I they have to fill some field to extract what I need.
They have to make 63 different extractions (with different values of objects, for example - but inside the same transaction - you can see in the print) from their SAP, to later send to me all extracted files.
Do you know if there is an automated way to extract that, so they don't have to make 63 extractions?
My biggest problem is that every time they make mistakes. It's a lot of things to fill..
Can I create a variant and send it to them? Is it possible to export my variant so they can import it without the need to fill 63x different data?
Thank you.
When this is a task which takes considerable effort by multiple people each year, then it is something which might be worth automatizing.
First you need to find out where that transaction gets its data from. If you spend some time analyzing and debugging the program behind the transaction, you will surely find which SELECT's on which database table(s) provide that data. If you are lucky, there might even be a function module for it.
Then you just need to write an own ABAP program which performs the same selections.
Now about the interesting part: How to get that data to you. There are several approaches here. The best one depends on your requirements and your technical infrastructure. Some possibilities are:
Let users run the program in foreground, use the method cl_gui_frontend_services=>gui_download to save the data to a file on the user's PC and ask them to send it to you via email
Run the program in background and save the file on the application server. Then ask your sysadmins how to get that file from their application server to you. The simplest way would be to just map a network fileserver so they all write to the same place, but there might be some organizational hurdles in the way which prevent that. (Our security people would call me crazy if I proposed to allow access to SMB shares from outside of our network, but your mileage may vary)
Have the program send the data to you directly via email. You can send emails from an SAP system using the function module SO_NEW_DOCUMENT_ATT_SEND_API1. This of course requires that the system was configured to be able to send emails (which you can do with transaction code SCOT). Again, security considerations apply. When it's PII or other confidential data, then you should not send it in an unencrypted email.
Use an RFC call to send the data to your own SAP system which aggregates the data
Use a webservice call to send the data to your own non-SAP system which aggregates the data
You can create a recording in transaction SM35.
There you fill a tcode (SUIM), start recording, make some input in transaction SUIM and then press 'Execute'. Then you can go back to recording (F3 multiple times) and the system will generate some table with commands (structure is BDCDATA). You can delete unnecessary part (i.e. BACK button click) and save it to use as a 'macro'. Then you can replay this recording and it will do exactly what you did.
Also it's possible to export/import the recording to text file, so you can explore it's structure, write some VBA script to create such recording from your parameters and sent it to users. But keep in mind that blanks are meaningful.
It's a standard tools so there's no any coding in the system.
You can save the selection as a variant.
Fill in the selection criteria and press Save.
It can be reused.
You can also transport Variants if the they have a special name
I accidentally overwrote a saved project query in BQ with a completely unrelated query. I can't find any documentation about retrieving overwritten queries or about any sort of version control. Has anyone done this as well and recovered their query?
Unfortunately, "Saved Query" is UI internal feature (see How to access “Saved Queries” programmatically? and there is respective feature request REST API for Saved Queries), so we really have no way to manage / control this cases
Meantime you can use query history (either in UI or via respective API or in Stackdriver) to locate use of that query and recreate/re-save it again
Can i insert new data/update the existing data into Essbase using Excel add-In/Smart view like I update the data into Palo Multidimentional database?
regards,
Sri.
Yes. This is what Lock & Send is used for. After you have drilled to an intersection that you would to update/load/change data in, you enter it directly in within Excel. Then perform a Lock operation using the add-in or SmartView. This tells Essbase that you would like to update data that is currently being shown on your spreadsheet. Then perform a Send operation. This will upload all of the data on your sheet back to the database, assuming that you have access to change that data (if you are a read-only user or don't have sufficient filter access, for example, then you can't change the data). Note that all of the data in the spreadsheet will be sent up -- so it is useful to navigate to the smallest possible subset of data that you would like to change.
After sending the data, it will automatically be unlocked. Then just retrieve the sheet to verify that the data you uploaded did in fact upload. If you are trying to upload to members that are dynamic calc, for example, then it won't work. Also note that typically data is loaded such that every intersection point is a Level-0 member, if not then it is possible that a subsequent aggregation/calc in the database might erase the data you just uploaded.
I need a simple tool to visualize the status of a series of processes (ETL processes, but that shouldn't matter). This process monitor need to be customizable with color coding for different status codes. The plan is to place the monitor on a big screen in the office making any faults instantly visible to everyone.
Today I can check the status of these processes by running an sql statement against the underlying tables in our oracle database. The output of these queries are the abovementioned status codes for each process. I'm imagining using these sql statements, run periodically (say, every minute or so), as an input to this monitor.
I've considered writing a simple web interface for doing this, but I'm thinking something like this should exist out there already. Anyone have any suggestions?
If just displaying on one workstation another option is SQL Developer Custom Reports. You would still have to fire up SQL Developer and start the report, but the custom reports have a setting so they can be refreshed at a specified interval (5-120 seconds). Depending on the 'richness' of the output you want you can either:
Create a simple Table report (style = Table)
Paste in one of the queries you already use as a starting point.
Create a PL/SQL Block that outputs HTML via DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE statements (Style = plsql-dbms_output)
Get creative as you like with formatting, colors, etc using HTML tags in the output. I have used this to create bar graphs to show progress of v$Long_Operations. A full description and screen shots are available here Creating a User Defined HTML Report
in SQL Developer.
If you just want to get some output moving you can forego SQL Developer, schedule a process to use your PL/SQL block to write HTML output to a file, and use a browser to display your generated output on your big screen. Alternately make the file available via a web server so others in your office can bring it up. Periodically regnerate the file and make sure to add a refresh meta tag to the page so browsers will periodically reload.
Oracle Application Express is probably the best tool for this.
I would say roll your own dashboard. Depends on your skillset, but I'd do a basic web app in Java (spring or some mvc framework, I'm not a web developer but I know enough to create a basic functional dashboard). Since you already know the SQL needed, it shouldn't be difficult to put together and you can modify as needed in future. Just keep it simple I would say (don't need a middleware or single sign-on or fancy views/charts).
Background
I have an SQL CE database, that is constantly updated (every second).
I have a (web) application that allows a user to look at the data in real-time. At some point a user can click "take a snapshot" button, and it will open the snapshot in a different window.
And then on that form, there is "print" and "download" buttons that will either generate a page for printing, or will stream the data as CSV file - but same data snapshot has to be used, i.e. I can't go to the DB to get latest data for that.
Details
SQL CE dabatase is exposed through WCF web service.
Snapshot consists of up to 500 records, 10 columns each. Expiration time on the snapshot of 2 hours is sufficient.
It is a low-traffic application, so I don't expect more than few (5) connections at the same time.
Loosing snapshot is not a big deal, user can simply generate new one.
database is accessed by self-hosted WCF web service using Linq-to-SQL.
Web site is ASP.NET MVC hosted on UltiDev Cassini.
database, and web site are most likely be on the same box, when deployed. The entire app is intranet bound.
Problem
I need to cache the snapshot of the data at the moment user pressed "take a snapshot" button, so that I can use same data to generate print page, or generate a file for download.
Solution 1:
Each time there is a need to generate a snapshot, I will create a table in the database. Since there are no temp tables in SQL CE, I will need to clean it up myself.
Solution 2:
Cache the snapshot in-memory on either DB server, or web server.
Question:
Is there anything wrong with proposed solutions? Any different solution suggestions?
A consideration is the typical usage pattern. Do most snapshots eventually result in either being printed or exported or both?
If such is the case, we might as well "get it in memory" (temporarily) in the form of a non blocking (asynchronous) select statement from the device to the server. In this fashion the data will "be there" or well on its way when user decides to use it.
If on the other hand many snapshot end up not being effectively used, Solution #1 seems quite ok (maybe the table could be named after the account/user, hence guaranteeing "self clean up" based on the number of snapshot a user can maintain at a given time (though it seems to be just one, with even the tolerance of loosing it sometimes).
500 rows by 10 columns isn't really very large at all. For the sake of simplicity in this case, I might just generate the CSV data at the same time I generate the initial snapshot page, and then place the CSV data in a hidden field in the snapshot page. The "Print" and "Download CSV" buttons would then POST the form that contains the CSV data to a Print page that generates the printable version from the posted CSV data, or a page that streams the CSV directly back to the client's browser, respectively. This way, at least, you wouldn't have any clean-up issues to deal with, and you avoid having to cache something on the server (either in the cache proper or in the database) that might well end up never being used at all.
If you cached the CSV data in a hidden field client-side, you could even handle both the printing and the CSV display completely client-side with javascript, although I don't know if that's worth the trouble or not.