Spatial Tableau Data Extracts

[Marco]

Hey Alteryx Community,

I think Alteryx uses the Tableau SDK to create tableau data extracts, TDE's. Since Tableau 10.3, there is functionality to connect to spatial files in Tableau (.shp). These shapefiles can be converted to an tableau data extract within Tableau. The tableau SDK has this functionality as well, but Alteryx does not support it yet. The suggestion is to add this functionality. See https://onlinehelp.tableau.com/current/api/sdk/en-us/SDK/tableau_sdk_samples.htm for the SDK link. 

Spatial TDE's are way smaller (3gb .shp went to 140mb TDE) and way faster.

Thanks,

Marco 

[jonathandrummey]

I'd really like this as well.

Also, the Tableau data extract format can support multiple spatial objects at once which is  helpful for some use cases. For example in Kenya we're having to generate three outputs - a CSV with the data, a spatial file for health facilities, then another spatial file for wards (a geographic level above village/town), then join them in Tableau and generate a TDE from that. We'd like to skip all of that and just use Alteryx.

Jonathan

[ARich]

Hi All,

Thanks for the feedback. We'll look at adding this in a future release.

Best,

Alex

[dataMack]

I'd add my support for this idea as well. A member of my team discovered this limitation recently when trying to build some tableau dashboards. I assume it's an easy enhancement for Alteryx since they just need to start useing the v2.0 of the tableau data API anyway I'm order to write to Hyper. V2.0 supports the spatial data types as well.

[JeffSEaton]

Hi, is there any update from Alteryx on this?  I've just moved to Alteryx 2018 which now includes .hyper in the output formats, but still no ability to write spatial data to .hyper (as far as I can tell).  This is disappointing.  Surely it would have been on their pretty-important-things-to-do list.  We find the .hyper with spatial works very well and quickly with large data-sets (talking millions of rows with spatial attributes)

We have been using the tableau data API (run in a python script from a workflow) to accomplish this. The workflow must first write the data to a spatial database, then a python script that reads the database is run with some arguments and voilà, .hyper with spatial.  So its a hack, not very pretty and not convenient.

Is there any time frame for when this important functionality might be included out of the box?   

[ARich]

This will be included with the 18.2 release.

[jdrummey]

Hi @AlexP, 

Will this new functionality handle just one spatial object per extract or multiple?

Jonathan

[ARich]

@jdrummey, It will handle multiple objects.

[JeffSEaton]

Hi @AlexP 

I just installed Designer 2018.2 in anticipation that I would be able to write spatial data to .hyper files.  However, it appears that is not the case.  I get a simple "" error when trying to write spatial to a hyper file.  As soon as I remove the spatial data from the stream I am able to successfully write to a .hyper file.  Can you confirm whether or not this feature has been included in 2018.2?

[JeffSEaton]

Hi all,

scratch that.  The problem was with unclean data.  I had a polygon layer that had several objects with 0 sqKm area (indicating they were actually points, as there was a spatial object in the browse).  The write to .hyper process failed at the first of these.  However there was no message to say why it failed other than this error message: "Error: Designer x64: The Designer x64 reported: InboundNamedPipe::ReadFile: Not enough bytes read. The pipe has been ended."

So spatial data is being written but bad records kill the process in an ugly way.

[ARich]

As of 18.2, this is now available!