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 

[tkeller004]

Hi @JeffSEaton,

What was your solution to work around this?  I have been encountering this error, but I am new to working with spatial files.  I am working with two spatial files attempting to run a spatial match.  Regardless of the changes I make, I always end up circling back to the same error: 'InboundNamedPipe::ReadFile: Not enough bytes read. The pipe has been ended.'  I am not sure how to identify the "unclean" spatial data.  

I am only working with polygons, but i have done some spatial combines (using the summarize tool) early on in the workflow where they become multipolygons.  When I work with a small portion of data, output works fine.  Any help would be appreciated!

@AlexP

[jdrummey]

Hi @tkeller004 ,

A couple of notes:

- Definitely do the checks in Alteryx to makes sure you've got good spatial objects. For example you can use the Spatial Info tool to get area information.

- One method I've used for testing is to output an ESRI shapefile and then testing out that shapefile in a GIS tool and/or Tableau. The shapefile format appears to be more "forgiving" than the Hyper output (at least through 2019.3, I haven't tried in 2019.4) and that's let me get a to file that I could display and see where there was bad data.

- Also when I was getting this error it was due to having String & VString and not WString or V_WString data types...try using a Select tool to explicitly change the data types before the Output tool that is writing to Hyper, that was supposed to have been fixed sometime last year.

Finally, depending on your original data when writing to Hyper and visualizing in Tableau there can be a problem with the default zoom level in Tableau. Here's a thread: https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussions/Spatial-Geometry-Output-to-Hyper-vs-SH... It turns out that order of the polygon vertices that Tableau uses internally in Hyper is different than that used by (most?/all?) ESRI Shapefiles and the Hyper API that Alteryx is using doesn't account for that. If you run into this let me know, I've got a macro I've been working on to get around this (that also supports multiple table extracts).