How to process, wrangle, analyze and visualize your data ... · Alteryx, a leading data-blending solution and Tableau, a market-leading data visualization tool, the EAT stack delivers

White paper Exasol, Alteryx & Tableau

How to process, wrangle, analyze and visualize your data with three complementary tools

Contents


Introduction 4 The data analytics opportunity 5 Finding the right tools for the right job 7

Why multiple solutions deliver better than one 8

The EAT stack: Exasol, Alteryx, Tableau 9

The EAT stack: How and why it works well together 10

The EAT stack: Gains and benefits 15

Summary 17

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3White paper Exasol, Alteryx & Tableau

Paired with one another, Exasol, Alteryx and Tableau solutions talk to each other to create a powerful package for processing, blending, augmenting and visualizing even

bigger volumes of data than you can imagine. Indeed, the right solution you’re looking for

may well be several tools together.

“”

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01Introduction

There’s no doubt that data and analytics play a big part in many companies’ strategies and dayto- day operations. But getting the most from your data requires more from the tools you use – and that often means using several tools in conjunction with each other. Just as important as identifying and using the right tool for the right job, it’s important to acknowledge that, together, different tools have a greater power when you want to maximize the value of your data.

Exasol is the world’s fastest in-memory analytic database; Alteryx is a leading data blending solution; Tableau is a market-leading data visualization tool. Each offers unique and powerful functionality to process, arrange and visualize your data. But what makes these more powerful? A combination of all three in a single solution stack: EAT.

By bringing together all three tools, you can take advantage of high-speed data analytics (Exasol), then mix and blend your data (Alteryx) and visualize and bring the outcomes to life (Tableau). As a result, you get the benefits of all three.

In this e-book you will learn: how to find the right tool for the right job why one solution alone may not address

the data challenges your business is facing about the Exasol, Alteryx and Tableau

(EAT) stack how your organization can derive the

most value out of the EAT stack how you can determine whether your

organization is ready to implement the EAT stack and its analytics platform

This e-book is designed to help users who: want to move towards real-time analytics do not have the technical staff or

knowhow to build out complex systems, and just want to get started with high performance data analytics, processing and visualizations

have existing Tableau and/or Alteryx solutions but are dissatisfied with the performance of their underlying database which results in poor user experience for data preparation and interaction with dashboards

have Exasol and are looking for a data preparation and visualization solution for ad hoc analytics


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The data analytics opportunityThere are two things every business is aware of:

1. data has intrinsic value2. the amount of data being generated

continues to increase exponentially

The inevitable conclusion is that organizations are sitting on and trying to make sense of tremendous amounts of data that continue to grow, trying to figure out from the sheer volume where the value is that, in turn, will help them to drive their businesses. Getting to this stage involves using analytics and various tools to process, organize and visualize this data into something meaningful and relevant for business teams and their decision makers.

But how do you evaluate and chose the right tools for your data analytics environment? Many tools exist and while they are great, they all do different things and not all are created equally. This means that there’s almost as much evaluation work to do of data analytics, preparation and visualization solutions as there is data to analyze, prepare and visualize in the first place.

This is where we see companies run into problems almost before they begin.Overwhelmed by choice when evaluating the different tools available, they simply select a solution and start using it, sinking considerable time and resources into their choice, only to find out later that the tool is inadequate and does not meet the business’s needs.


6

Playing with some demo datasets in @exasolag today - it‘s the first database I can stand w/a live

connection in Tableau - even with 1B+ rows.

MIN (Time from Big Data to Insight) =@Exasolag + @tableau.

@bibleviz

@craigbloodworth


https://twitter.com/ExasolAG?utm_campaign=Social%20-%20Whitepapers&utm_source=Referral&utm_medium=Whitepaper


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03Finding the right tools for the right job

It’s easy to believe that you can find everything you need within one tool; the “one-size-fits-all” approach would make things very easy. But the actual work of performing in-depth data analytics, preparation and visualization is usuallymuch vaster and more complex than one single tool can manage.

There are two clear reasons why differenttools exist in the first place:

Use case:Some tools are very good at delivering traditional business intelligence and reporting while others are more suited to ad hoc analytics.

User:Different types of users from technical, commercial, or analytical backgrounds bring varying skillsets and approaches to how they use a tool. While one data visualization tool may not require more than basic MS Excel knowledge, another solution may only be usable by people proficient in writing SQL and having strong knowledge of data architectures.

As you define the analytics requirements foryour organization, it will become clear whatoptions are available given your teams’ skills and the expected outcomes delivered by an analytics tool or solution.

For the purposes of this e-book we will make a number of assumptions based on trends we have seen in the industry as well as with our existing customers and partners:

You work with large datasets and want to access ALL of your data for analytics

You want to transform and blend different datasets

You want to make your insights accessible for a wide audience through interactive dashboards and data storytelling

These three aspects of analytics need to be integrated and considered as a whole when choosing the right tools.


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04Why multiple solutions deliver better than one

If data and advanced analytics are core to your strategy of driving business success, one tool may not be adequate to deliver what you need. Specifically, it may not

deliver enough insight allow you to look at full datasets or

delivering analysis in real time let you create meaningful visualizations of

your findings

A combination of the right tools can help you to address all of your needs through using an integrated analytics platform, which in turn can add significant value to your company and its bottom line.

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05The EAT stack: Exasol, Alteryx, Tableau


What Exasol does: Queries and analyzes unlimited

amounts of data faster than any other analytic database in the market.

How you benefit:Exasol integrates seamlessly with other tools to boost performance – making fast data processing and analytics a reality that helps transform and visualize business-critical data in real time.

What Alteryx does: Data blending and advanced data

analytics, which can be performed by business users through a simple and intuitive user interface.

How you benefit:With the flexibility to integrate various datasets, Alteryx gives users deeper business insights from multiple data sources.

What Tableau does: Helps people see and understand

their data through an intuitive interface where users create visual representations of data and information.

How you benefit:Data visualizations and reports are shared through Tableau Server as a collaboration platform. Ultimate performance can be achieved through a data acceleration layer enabling live data connections for ultimate data freshness and a single source of truth approach.

Comprised of: Exasol, delivering ultimate performance for data processing, Alteryx, a leading data-blending solution and Tableau, a market-leading data visualization tool, the EAT stack delivers a powerful visualization and analytics platform that harnesses the

strengths of each component to enable data-driven decision making in organizations.

The following section provides a brief overview of each tool:

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06The EAT stack:How and why it works well together

You have probably heard about or experienced some of these combinations already. As the tools play together so nicely, why not bring all three of them together as an analytics platform to help you make the most of your data?

Exasol & Tableau, Tableau & Alteryx, Alteryx & Exasol …

What it excels at High performance inmemory

analytics database Receive data from DWH and other

sources (pull/push) In-database analytics Easy to get started

What it does, but not well Transactional-based processing

What it does not do Data visualization

What it excels at Data preparation, transformation

and loading Automated workflows Geospatial analytics Predictive analytics Predictive analytics Easy to get started

What it does, but not well Data visualization

What it does not do Storage of data / being a database

What it excels at Data visualization Ad hoc visual analysis Geographical mapping Data story telling Easy sharing within organizations Easy to get started

What it does, but not well Simple ETL Some statistical analyses Limited enterprisereadiness re data

governance

What it does not do Advanced statistical analysis and

modeling


White paper 11

06The EAT stack:How and why it works well together

What could be better than a self-service data analytics tool made for everyone, not just data professionals? Alteryx lets users blend, manipulate and augment data, providing the flexibility required by most data analytics and BI teams across organizations.

Tableau is one of the best-known data visualization solutions. Enabling your business users to access, see and understand their data through Tableau means your organization can harness the collective intelligence of its workforce to identify opportunity, spot risks and challenges by democratizing data and making analytics a joint effort across the business.

The power of fast insights, and having a highperformance database to deliver high speed access to data, cannot be underestimated. By ingesting virtually unlimited amounts of data and managing complete datasets, Exasol powers the speed and volume that data users can tap into for large-scale analytics.


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Exasol and Tableau simplify our business operations considerably, and the fast analytics we can now do have already translated into a

positive return on investment! Kreditech Holding SSL GmbH


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06The EAT stack: Option 1 when you want to prepare, blend, analyze and visualize data


The Data

Use Alteryx Designer to orchestrate your data preparation and blending processes.

This ensures you can build optimal workflows to coordinate data loads from your source systems into Exasol.

Use Exasol as your performance layer for data visualization, which holds the relevant data for your analytics.

Connect Tableau live to Exasol and visualize the data.

Benefit from a superfast database to enable analytics of Big Data and accelerate your decisionmaking processes in alignment with the pace of your organization‘s needs and customer expectations.

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06The EAT stack: Option 2 when you want to process, transform, enhance and visualize data


Load into Exasol for acceleration.

Connect Alteryx Designer to Exasol and build workflows to extract, transform and load data, and to enhance the data, e.g. with geospatial information.

The transformed data can be outputted straight back into Exasol or alternatively a Tableau Data Extract (TDE) file. However, the TDE file will not use a live connection to Exasol.

Connect Tableau to the transformed data in Exasol or the TDE (if appropriate) and visualize the data.

The Data

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07The EAT stack: Gains and benefits

Save time and resources, now and later: Focus on the data, not the database; you

can include as much data as you like and know that you will get your results in real time.

Using the best tools for each task ensures efficiency and economy of time spent.

Enhance the data, enhance the value: Being able to process virtually unlimited

data volumes with Exasol, before blending and enriching the data with Alteryx and visualizing your results with Tableau, lets you enhance the value of the end results and contribute to your business.

Make the most of your data investment: Once you have made the choice to get

behind a real-time, data-driven strategy and have invested in the right tools, they will help you achieve your targets and give you a significant return on investment.

When combining the power of these three tools, you achieve a number of significant benefits:


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Exasol is the responsive and highly capable analytic database we need. Now we have theright engine behind our data analytics and our

Tableau visualizations.Atheon Analytics Ltd

Another reason to love@Exasol AG: Live queries of

XML data in #Tableau. @ugamarkj



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08Summary

In summary, the EAT stack combines the bestof- breed tools for data processing, blending, data analytics and visualizations. The superior data processing performance from Exasol complements Alteryx and Tableau and enables genuine real-time processing by accelerating analytics without the need to replace existing database tools and infrastructure.

Contact us today via email

[email protected]

or go online at

www.exasol.com/eat

Ready to get started with the EAT stack?To learn more about the Exasol, Alteryx & Tableau (EAT) stack and what it can do for your business, get in touch.

Exasol AG Neumeyerstr. 22 – 2690411 NurembergGermanywww.exasol.com

Tel: +49 911 23991-0Email: [email protected]

About this Whitepaper: Information listed here may change after the data sheet has been printed (July 2018). Exasol is a registered trademark. All trademarks named are protected and the property of their respective owner. © 2018, Exasol AG | All rights reserved

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How to process, wrangle, analyze and visualize your data ... · Alteryx, a leading data-blending solution and Tableau, a market-leading data visualization tool, the EAT stack delivers