Time Pieces: The Temporal Analytics Jigsaw

Tableau can perform simple temporal analytics when time is viewed as a simple binnable scalar, but more complex tasks require sophisticated level-of-detail calculations or even baroque data preparation flows. This prevents ordinary users from performing analytic tasks like counting the number of employee workdays per fiscal year. Moreover, the queries needed for such tasks are notoriously slow. This session proposes temporal analytic components that can help extend the Tableau drag-and-drop interface to support a wider range of temporal questions. Recently published database technologies for windowing and inequality joins demonstrate that the required queries are becoming tractable. Putting these pieces together produces a vision of how to extend Tableau to perform sophisticated temporal analytics with minimal user effort. Session Speaker: Richard Wesley