Collect Data with the Tableau Server Repository


The Tableau Server repository is a PostgreSQL database that stores data about all user interactions, extract refreshes, and more. You can enable access to the repository and use the data in it to help analyze and understand Tableau Server performance.

Looking for Tableau Server on Windows? See Collect Data with the Tableau Server Repository(Link opens in a new window).

After you enable access to the Tableau Server repository, you can create views with data from the repository. The views that you create with this data are sometimes called custom administrative views. In addition to being used for performance monitoring, custom admin views can be used for tracking user activity, workbook activity, and more. For more information on the type of data that you can use for these views, see Create Custom Administrative Views and About the Tableau Server Data Dictionary. Alternatively, if you are only interested in performance data, you can use the preselected database tables in the sample performance workbook.

Enable access to the Tableau Server repository

You can use Tableau Desktop to connect to and query the Tableau Server repository using two built-in users. The user named tableau has access to several database views you can use as part of building your own analyses of Tableau Server activity. The user named readonly has access to additional database tables that you can use to create views for even more in-depth analysis and this is the user we recommend you use.

Before you can connect to the repository, you need to enable access for the readonly user to the database. Use the tsm data-access repository-access enable command to enable repository access. When you enable repository access, you also create a password for the readonly user. You will use this password to access to the repository. You may also need to have port 8060 opened on the repository node so you can connect to the database.

  1. Verify that port 8060 is opened on the computer where the repository is installed. This is a requirement if you are connecting remotely.

  2. Enable repository access and create a readonly user password:

    tsm data-access repository-access enable --repository-username readonly --repository-password <PASSWORD>

    If your password includes special characters, you may need to escape the characters or enclose the password in quotes. Refer to the documentation for the Linux distro that you are running for information about passing special characters in bash shell.

    This command will restart Tableau Server.

    Note: If you later decide that you want to disable remote access to the Tableau Server repository, use the tsm data-access repository-access disable command. The command disables external access to the repository. This will not disable access from localhost. For more information, see tsm data-access repository-access disable.

     

Connect to the Tableau Server repository

This section describes how to connect to a custom set of tables from Tableau Server repository. For more information on the tables that you can connect to, see About the Tableau Server Data Dictionary.

  1. In Tableau Desktop select Data > Connect to Data, and then select PostgreSQL as the database to connect to.

    Note: You might need to install the PostgreSQL database drivers. You can download drivers from www.tableau.com/support/drivers(Link opens in a new window).

  2. In the PostgreSQL connection dialog box, enter the name or URL for Tableau Server in the Server box. If you have a distributed server installation, enter the name or IP address of the node where the repository is hosted.

    Connect using the port you have set up for the pgsql.port, which is 8060 by default.

  3. Specify workgroup as the database to connect to.

  4. Connect using the user and the password you specified.

  5. Click the Require SSL option if you have configured Tableau Server to use SSL for connecting to the repository. For more information, see Configure Postgres SSL to Allow Direct Connections from Clients.

  6. Click Connect.

  7. Select one or more tables to connect to.

    The tableau user has access to all of the tables that start with an underscore or with hist_. For example, you can connect to _background_tasks and _datasources. The hist_ tables include information about server users that isn't currently presented in the Actions by Specific User view. The readonly user has access to additional tables that can be used to query other information about server usage.

  8. Click Go to Worksheet.

PostgreSQL Version

Use the following steps to find the version of PostgreSQL used by Tableau Server:

  1. Log into Tableau Server as a user with sudo access.

  2. Use the following command to view the version of PostgreSQL installed on the machine:

    $ postgres --version psql --version

If the above command results in an error, you may need to locate the directory. Use the following steps to locate the directory:

  1. $ locate find /opt/tableau –name psql

  2. Navigate to the path and issue the version command to find the PostgreSQL version:

    $ postgres psql --version

You can also connect to the workgroup database and issue the following query to get the version: select version()

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