0:00Hey, it's Tim here. In today's video, we're
0:02carrying on the push to understanding Table
0:03au Server.
0:04In the last video, I did a Tableau Server
0:06install. I've also done a video on security
0:09with Tableau
0:09Server and how to set up things like
0:11permissions. But in this video, I want to
0:13dig back into Tableau
0:14Server, the architecture itself, and talk
0:16about Tableau Server processes. Now, these
0:18are super
0:19important because they fundamentally
0:21control the way Tableau Server works. One
0:23of the things you
0:24have to do, or you had to do in the
0:25previous Tableau Server exams, is
0:27understand each of
0:28these server processes, and even have an
0:30intimate knowledge of how to troubleshoot
0:33by understanding
0:33which process does what, and how to
0:35troubleshoot where the problem actually is.
0:37And it reminded me
0:38of a visualization on Tableau Public that I
0:40think can help explain this in a much
0:42better way than
0:43even Tableau's own documentation. Let's get
0:46stuck in. Okay, so like anyone's serious,
0:48of course,
0:48everything starts with a Google search. If
0:50you actually go and search Tableau Server
0:52processes,
0:52you do get this documentation here. And
0:54when you click on that, it actually takes
0:56you to a page
0:57that essentially explains the processes.
0:59Now, the problem with Google search
1:01recently is that the
1:02Tableau platform has changed a lot. And at
1:05the moment, the ranking of specific links
1:08sometimes
1:09links to maybe not necessarily the best
1:11landing page for you to understand that
1:13topic. Because
1:14of course, Tableau have changed these pages
1:16over time. So when you land on the Tableau
1:18Server
1:19processes, it starts to talk about licensed
1:21services, and then it starts to break them
1:24down.
1:24But in reality, given the way that
1:26licensing works today, whether the process
1:29is licensed or not
1:30actually matters a lot less, especially if
1:31you're working with something like the
1:33Tableau Cloud,
1:34where you're using a completely different
1:36licensing model in relation to this. The
1:38other
1:38thing is that this sort of tabular
1:40breakdown of the process whilst it's useful
1:42, whilst it does
1:43explain exactly what the processes do, it
1:45doesn't show you the interplay and the
1:47interrelationships
1:48between these processes, which is actually
1:50quite important. When it comes to troubles
1:52hooting,
1:52let's say something's gone wrong with
1:54authentication, and you're trying to upload
1:56a workbook, how do you troubleshoot where
1:58in the flow something has gone wrong. And
2:00so when you
2:00start to sort of learn Tableau Server in
2:02general, and one of the big challenges is
2:04you start to dig
2:05into all this documentation, you have to
2:07sort of build this mental mind map of what
2:09's going on.
2:10And eventually you get to pages like this,
2:12which show you diagrams of how the
2:13individual nodes work.
2:15And there's actually sort of a couple of
2:17images that really speak to this. The first
2:19one is this
2:19particular one, which you'll typically see
2:22in TSM. And this one actually has a sort of
2:24a reduced list
2:25of processes. And actually, if you go back
2:27a few years in terms of Tableau, some of
2:30these processes
2:30didn't even exist. And if you go even a bit
2:32deeper, you do get even more processes that
2:35are
2:35being added onto the system, as the
2:37architecture and the platform grows. And as
2:40we get new features,
2:41like for example, prep scheduling, and the
2:43ability to schedule flows in the Tableau
2:45Cloud or on Tableau
2:46Server. And so it's really important to
2:48actually understand how these all come
2:50together. Now, one
2:51of the best places one of the best
2:53resources I use when I passed my previous
2:55Tableau Server certified
2:56pro exam was actually this Tableau public
2:59resource. And this is a resource that's on
3:02Tableau public,
3:03I've actually put a link in the description
3:05, I'll put it as the first link in the first
3:07comment of
3:08this video as well. But you can see that
3:09this is actually a really nice resource for
3:11two reasons.
3:12Number one, this was actually uploaded by
3:15technical product marketing. This back in
3:172018,
3:18and they've updated it until February 2020.
3:22So it's it's sort of not been updated
3:24recently. But
3:25actually, for the bulk of what you need to
3:27learn, this is still functional. And
3:29obviously, we could
3:30maybe put in a community effort to update
3:32this. If you if you like to do that, let me
3:34know in the
3:34comments, and we'll get something going
3:36maybe on GitHub with the data source. And
3:38we can kind of
3:38work on it together as a community. But
3:41nonetheless, it has a really nice setup
3:43here,
3:43because what you can do that you can't
3:45really do easily in the documentation is
3:47you can choose a
3:48flow. So for example, let's say that I want
3:50to publish a workbook, I'll go ahead and
3:51select that,
3:52you'll see that the visualization clears
3:54itself. And it wants me to choose a step
3:57two over in step
3:58two, it wants you to ask, well, are you
4:00publishing this workbook with an extract or
4:02with a live
4:02connection? If I select a live connection,
4:04then you'll see that it brings the
4:06architecture
4:06diagram back. But where this tool comes
4:09into life where it really, really works
4:12well, is if we drag
4:13the slider all the way to the right,
4:15essentially, what that slider does is it
4:17steps through the
4:18individual processes required to publish
4:21that workbook. So you can see at the first
4:23step here,
4:24Tableau desktop generates thumbnails for
4:26the workbook, then request to upload the
4:28workbook
4:28and sends it dot TWB x file. Step two, the
4:31gateway passes the request through the
4:33application server.
4:35Step three, the application server
4:37processes the request and sends it as XML
4:39to store in the
4:40repository. Number four, the repository
4:42stores the set thumbnails and the workbook
4:44XML. Number five,
4:45the application server creates the publish
4:48workbook results dialog window. That's what
4:50you see in desktop itself. The gateway
4:52sends the response to the user. And number
4:54seven,
4:54the publish workbook results dialog window
4:57is displayed to the user. And don't forget,
4:59this is with a live connection. And so if
5:01we just go back, now that I've sort of
5:03explained this to
5:04you, if we just bring this all the way back
5:06, let's bring it back to step one, I think
5:08this is the
5:08very first step here, you can see that it
5:11starts out and on the left, it's actually
5:13showing you
5:14the flow through the architecture on the
5:16left hand side. So if I step this from step
5:18one,
5:18obviously, we start over here on the left
5:20with the client, we go to step two, you see
5:22it draws
5:22an arrow to the next most logical step in
5:24the flow, which is the gateway, this is
5:26pretty much
5:27where all internet communication comes in.
5:30Step three, it goes from the gateway to the
5:32application
5:33server, the application service, and she
5:35runs the Tableau server in essence. And
5:37then from step four,
5:39it goes to the next step where it basically
5:40starts to break the workbook up into its
5:42constituent
5:43components. It takes the XML and puts that
5:46into the repository. It also takes the
5:49connection
5:49details and saves that where it needs to.
5:52And if we were doing an extract, there'd be
5:54some additional
5:55steps that I'll show you in a second. The
5:56application server creates a publish work
5:58book
5:59results dialog window, this is basically
6:01sending the request back, if I click back
6:03on my face,
6:03that will get this out of the way. And it
6:05basically keeps going through. So I've gone
6:07through this
6:07one, so you kind of get the idea. Now, the
6:09great thing here is we can actually see the
6:11difference
6:11if we were to change this to a extract. So
6:14if we go to an extract, you'll see that it
6:17's actually
6:17got more steps, it's got 10 steps in total.
6:20If we go all the way to the right hand side
6:22,
6:22you'll see there's actually a few
6:24additional steps and the few additional
6:25steps, the things
6:26that are different about this, if we just
6:28let this sort of drop there, I didn't
6:30actually let go of
6:31the clicker there, is that you've actually
6:33got the process of getting the data out of
6:35the extract,
6:36essentially splitting that from the work
6:37book and putting that into the file store,
6:39the extract
6:40essentially lives in the file store. And so
6:42when you publish a workbook, a package work
6:43book,
6:44it takes out the workbook, turns out into
6:46XML, puts that in one place, takes the data
6:49and puts
6:49it somewhere else. And that's the way
6:51essentially everything works. Now, this is
6:53of course, just one
6:54flow, you can try different flows here. So
6:56let's say you want to access a view, you
6:58want to go look
6:58at something in tablet. Well, if I go ahead
7:01and I choose the different type of views
7:03that I can
7:04access, I can look at a cache view, an
7:06embedded extract embedded live connection,
7:08external files,
7:10whatever I'm looking at, let's look at a
7:11cache view here and just see the impact
7:12that caching has.
7:13If I go to the right hand side here, and we
7:16start again, I can just drag the slider
7:18over here to the
7:18right hand side. And you see that it breaks
7:21this down step one, step two, step three,
7:23step four,
7:23you get the idea. This is a much better
7:26tool for looking at how the processes work.
7:29Because what
7:29you start to realize is there are some
7:31processes that are just fundamental in
7:33pretty much every
7:35part of the flow. And if you're having
7:37issues in those particular parts of the
7:39Tableau architecture,
7:40you're going to have issues with Tableau in
7:42pretty much most instances. And so when you
7:43're
7:43troubleshooting, it's really important to
7:45have this sort of general awareness. Now,
7:47it's also
7:48impossible to remember all of this off the
7:49top of your head, it's only through
7:51experience do you
7:52actually start to remember these things.
7:54And for a while, I worked a lot with Table
7:55au server. And
7:56some of this was just you know, the back of
7:58my hand, I haven't used it a lot recently.
8:00So it's
8:00some of it just left my head. So I'm trying
8:02to get back into this and trying to re
8:04understand these
8:05flows and make sure they work a lot better.
8:06But there's also some changes to this,
8:08there'll be
8:08elements of this diagram that are no longer
8:10correct. So one thing you can do is also
8:13try and
8:13look at this and start critiquing this and
8:15trying to make sense of new processes,
8:16finding out what
8:17those new processes are, what they do, and
8:19how that might impact the way this flow
8:21works. So I
8:22just wanted to make a really brief video
8:23about this tool, I'll put a link to it
8:25again in the
8:26description. So you can find out, I'm going
8:28to make a separate video maybe about the
8:29processes,
8:30that would be a slightly longer video. But
8:32I just wanted to call out this particular
8:34resource,
8:34because I think it's one of the best
8:35resources for doing this. I think if you're
8:37learning Tableau
8:38server, there's less and less people
8:39learning Tableau server, because of course,
8:41Tableau cloud
8:42is becoming more prominent. And so
8:44resources like this are coming far and few
8:46between. And so if we
8:48don't have things like this, I think we as
8:49a community have to sort of stand up and
8:51try and
8:51perpetuate these resources. So they exist a
8:54little bit more in the community. Thanks
8:56for watching,
8:57and I'll catch you in the next video.
9:00[BLANK_AUDIO]
Tableau | Tool strategy | Certification