ICU & QT UPDATES - New in Tableau 2022.2

0:00Hey it's me here in 22.2, Tableau are

0:02updating the ICU and the QT libraries that

0:06are contained

0:06inside of Tableau. This essentially has an

0:09impact on filtering and sorting and a bunch

0:11of other

0:11things depending on the language and

0:13country you're coming from. If you don't

0:15know what

0:16anything I've just said is about, let me

0:18tell you. Let's get stuck in. So for the

0:20first time in a

0:21while I'm actually doing a video without

0:23Tableau or Tableau Prep or any Tableau

0:26product because

0:27I've essentially got the notes from the pre

0:29-release which explains this pretty well.

0:31Let's first start with the ICU updates.

0:33Essentially the ICU stands for

0:35International

0:36Components for Unicode. This is actually a

0:39specific library of information that's

0:42provided

0:43by a standardized body. Now the reason this

0:45is important is because in different

0:48languages

0:48the Unicode characters and the way we form

0:52words and letters behave in completely

0:55different ways.

0:56An example might be, let's say you're

0:58ordering things using alphabetical order.

1:01Well in English

1:02that's from A to Z but in other languages

1:04the alphabetical order doesn't work the way

1:07maybe

1:08you and I would expect. The additional

1:10thing is that if you look at data in

1:12different contexts,

1:13let's say you're sorting things like a

1:15phone book, the alphabetical order in a

1:18phone book or the sort

1:19order in a phone book might be different to

1:21the sort order in a piece of text for

1:23example. You

1:24might have different contexts for sorting

1:25in different ways and essentially what the

1:27ICU

1:28library does is it creates a standardized

1:30body of all of that information that's

1:33specific to locales

1:35around the world and languages around the

1:36world. And what Tableau have done is they

1:38've updated that

1:39library for security reasons inside of the

1:42product. Now the net effect of that is that

1:44because this

1:45update is being done now you could see

1:48changes in the way that localization

1:50filters, calls and

1:52ranges work specifically inside of Tableau.

1:54Let's say every time you prick a drop down

1:56filter

1:56in certain languages they might be a change

1:59and what I did is I grabbed the table that

2:01was

2:01included in the pre-release notes that

2:03actually details the specific things to

2:05look for for

2:06different languages. So I'll just put this

2:08up on screen now you should hopefully

2:09already be able to

2:10see it. You can see here there are some

2:12languages where this has a bigger impact

2:14than others.

2:15Mostly the Japanese and the Chinese or

2:17Korean languages where there's a lot of

2:20change there

2:21but nonetheless if you see anything weird

2:23happening with filtering or sort of

2:25anything like that this

2:27is exactly what to expect. Now what I hope

2:30the release notes do go on and share is a

2:33little bit

2:33more detailed information like I've got

2:36here. So we do get a little bit more of a

2:38breakdown and this

2:40specific example the most notable changes

2:42between ICU44 and the one that Tableau is

2:44moving to which

2:45is ICU68 are the updates to the local

2:48correlation tables. Here are a few things

2:50to look out for.

2:52A logic that expects data to be sorted in

2:53particular order or to function correctly,

2:56any sort of data that is persisted, any

2:58data that is persisted that relies on data

3:00sorted in a

3:01consistent way. These are essentially just

3:03things to go look out for and there are

3:06sort of different

3:06contexts for this as well so search, regex,

3:10specific locale formatting, numbers, times,

3:13currencies, temperatures. This is the kind

3:16of stuff that can kind of drive you up the

3:18wall

3:18if you don't understand there's something

3:19else going on. You think something is

3:21always sorted

3:21in a specific way but it just so happens in

3:23your business there's that one use case

3:25that's super

3:26important where it needs to sort another

3:28way and actually this might come to the

3:30fore when you're

3:31looking at this particular set of updates.

3:33So I'm not an ICU expert, I'm definitely

3:35not a character

3:37expert either, I'm not part of the Unicode

3:39standards body so what I would recommend

3:42you do

3:43is you go over to the website there's

3:45actually a dedicated website icu.unicode.

3:48org and you can go

3:49ahead and look for the standards so Tableau

3:52have gone from 44 to 68 I believe so let's

3:55see I think

3:56this is yeah here here's a text where they

3:58specifically highlight what they're going

4:00from

4:01and to and so you can go and look at the

4:03differences there and what this body does

4:06is they

4:06actually highlight the importance of it and

4:08what impact it has if you want some proper

4:11documentation

4:11and you have a bit more time than I do to

4:14go into real depth this this is what you'll

4:16see.

4:16I think for most people in the English

4:18language you won't see much of a difference

4:22I don't think

4:22there'll be a huge difference it seems to

4:25be affecting a specific subset of languages

4:28in this

4:28particular case it's CGK otherwise known as

4:31China, Japanese and Korean that are most

4:34affected by this.

4:35Okay now the other change is the QT library

4:38so what is a QT library lots of terms here

4:41now

4:41Tableau develops software as you know and

4:43they like to probably not have to develop

4:46things

4:46multiple times so what they do is they use

4:48this library called QT allows them to build

4:51software

4:52in one place and then deploy it in multiple

4:54different places so the QT library

4:56essentially

4:57a third-party tool that is used for

4:59creating the graphical interface that we

5:02know for Tableau

5:03it allows them to build cross-platform

5:04applications and a bunch of other things

5:06that supports Linux,

5:07Windows and Mac. The change here is that

5:09Tableau is updating its internal library

5:11for the QT

5:12framework and that means it's going to have

5:14an impact on what we see in desktop.

5:16Now the only real warning for this is that

5:20when you have upgrades you do see defects

5:23throughout the product which is not really

5:26that helpful and while many of these

5:29defects are

5:30associated with rendering of the

5:32visualization or native UI elements feature

5:34specific defects are

5:35not uncommon because the upgrade also

5:37includes a newer version of chromium web-

5:40based UI and

5:41features are likely to present defects as

5:44well so basically if anything looks weird

5:48this might be

5:48the reason in 2022.2. I like that they're

5:51sort of I feel like this is being snuck in

5:53there as a

5:54feature hey we've upgraded this thing but

5:56it's going to cause a bunch of defects that

5:58's typically

5:59not a feature that's that's that's you know

6:02that does sort of make sense but it's in

6:04there in the

6:05notes as a feature re-release what I'm

6:08hoping is we see benefits from these new

6:11libraries being

6:11implemented again if you want to go check

6:14out what QT is who else uses QT you can go

6:16to the

6:16qt.io website if you actually go down you

6:19'll see that Tableau and a bunch of other

6:22companies are

6:23noted as you know big users so Sky, Perjo,

6:26Rockwell, Automation, Tableau, LG, Mercedes

6:30,

6:30Benz and it's used in lots of different

6:33contexts Tableau I don't think use every

6:36single part of the

6:36QT framework but yeah it's absolutely

6:39something that Tableau does use to the fact

6:42that they are

6:44a named customer on the QT web page and it

6:46basically talks about business intelligence

6:50and analytics and what they're using QT to

6:52do so if you want to know more about that I

6:54'll put the

6:54link to both this and the ICU stuff in the

6:56description so you can go find out more but

7:00the

7:00general message here is look out for quirks

7:02look out for bugs look out for things that

7:04don't look

7:04like they should or behave the way they

7:07should it might be be caused by the ICU or

7:10the QT library

7:11updates thanks for watching I'll catch you

7:14in the next video

7:15you

7:18[ Silence ]