Explain Connect live in Tableau?

Live Connect (previously Messenger Connect, Live Services and Windows Live Dev) is a collection of APIs and common controls that allow developers to have a deeper control and offers access to the core Windows Live services and data through open and easily accessible application programming interfaces (APIs).

Connect live creates a direct connection to the data source and speed up access.

If you use only Tableau Desktop, you manage all your own connections to data. For example, you might open Tableau, connect to SQL Server, and then select the database, table, and columns to work with. Or you might connect to an Excel spreadsheet and select the sheet to analyze. You generally don’t think about how you’re going to share the data with others. In fact, a newbie error we’ve all made is to create a workbook based on a local Excel file, save the workbook as a .twb file, and then email the workbook out for others to admire. Only, of course, they can’t see anything, because the workbook you’ve emailed can’t actually get to your local Excel file.

Now that you’ve installed Tableau Server, you and your users must learn a different way of thinking about workbooks and data. Naturally, users will share their workbooks by publishing them to Tableau Server. But you and they also have to think about how to share the data that’s used by those workbooks.

With Tableau Server available to your users, you can share data in several ways:

  • Create and publish packaged workbooks that contain extracts created in Tableau Desktop. Other users can work with those workbooks and with the static data in the extracts.

  • Publish a data source that defines a connection to a database and that includes information about what data in that database to use. Users can then create workbooks that point to this source for their data.

Think about optimizing data access and security

In addition to thinking about ways you can share data access, you and your users must learn how to make the most efficient use of data. Optimizing data access with Tableau Server can seem complex at first. Tableau supports many data connectors. Each connector is optimized for the data that it connects to, and each connector has different characteristics. Many have different authentication requirements. Some do not allow extracts. Some support rich query filtering and operations, while others are more limited.

As you become familiar with Tableau Server and learn how to optimize data access for your scenarios, your users will see these benefits:

  • Performance. The goal is “flow.” When users are in the flow of data analysis, working with the data in different ways helps them achieve deeper understanding. You want to configure data access so that as much as possible it doesn’t interrupt your users’ flow experience.

  • Access to data. For many organizations, enforcing appropriate access to data is critical to the business. As a Tableau Server administrator, you can make sure that the access that users have to data meets the authentication and privacy requirements of your organization.

  • Single source for data. You can use Tableau Server to improve the consistency of data across your organization. You can manage data source connections and create extract refresh schedules to meet the needs of your users and establish stable and consistent data usage.