Well, I wasn’t too active in 2014. Many reasons, not one of them good enough to be mentioned here.
Now that we moved on, I will try to get some more content added regularly. Promised!
To all of you: happy new year!
This year’s first post, I will share my experience with the alpha version of Tableau 9.0’s REST API. Yes, you’ve read this right! As an OEM partner, I have the luxury of testing this. I will not get too much into details, not yet, since this is the Alpha version.
A little bit of background first.
Tableau asked me to test the REST API – but I got to try it only one week before the end of the alpha cycle. Yes, shame on me! But as it turns out, it is so good and so simple, and folks there are so helpful (thanks Michael and Russell!), that I was able to turn this around in my favor and succeeded in doing enough conclusive tests.
If you are integrating Tableau Server at all, you are by today familiar with the infamous TABCMD API. You know that adding a user takes way too much time. And if your system runs on some web server (in our case, IIS), then you know that it’s a pain to get it running in a secure manner.
Well, that’s the first thing the REST API does for you. No more TABCMD!
I published a small & simple example on Tableau’s website using c#. If you are looking into this, I recommend reading more there:
http://community.tableausoftware.com/thread/153755 (Need to be registered and logged in)
Bottom line: I was able to pull this off in a couple of days. This includes publishing a workbook to the server. That’s how great it is.
Can’t wait to get the official release!