What makes Tableau Connector unique?
Flexibility. Reliability... And Speed!
Our Tableau Connector is up to 10 times faster than the Web Data Connector.
All aspects of the design have been chosen to make it the most performant way to move data between FileMaker and Tableau.
How we did it
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The other way to connect FileMaker and Tableau is the “Tableau Web Data Connector for FileMaker.” It’s a nice thing. However, it uses the FileMaker Data API for the connection between FileMaker and Tableau. We built Tableau Connector in part so that we could leverage, instead, the JDBC connector. And, sure enough, in our testing, our method of syncing is ten times faster.
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Tableau Connector was built using the Tableau Connector SDK (provided by Tableau) to connect to data sources on FileMaker Server.
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On the FileMaker side, the Tableau Connector method uses Tables (Table Occurrences) rather than Layout context to define tables and fields for extract. While the Web Data Connector will get the fields (columns) from those available on a layout, then use the Data API to extract the data, the Tableau Connector method connects directly to each table by referencing a corresponding Table Occurrence, then extracts data via JDBC.
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Once connection is established, access to however many tables are made available with the associated privilege set. This can be both easier to configure and manage, as well as more flexible.