How Does Tableau Work?

While Tableau lets you analyze databases and spreadsheets like never before, you don’t need to know anything about databases to use Tableau. In fact, Tableau is designed to allow business people with no technical training to analyze their data efficiently.

Tableau is based on three simple concepts:

1. Connect - Connect Tableau to any database that you want to analyze. Note that Tableau does not import the data. Instead it queries to the database directly.
2. Analyze - Analyzing data means viewing it, filtering it, sorting it, performing calculations on it, reorganizing it, summarizing it, and so on.
   Using Tableau you can do all of these things by simply arranging fields of your data source on a Tableau worksheet. When you drop a field on a worksheet, Tableau queries the data using standard drivers and query languages (like SQL and MDX) and presents a visual analysis of the data.
3. Share - You can share results with others either by sharing workbooks with other Tableau users, by pasting results into applications such as Microsoft Office, printing to PDF or by using Tableau Server to publish or embed your views across your organization.