Tableau and Databricks Expand Strategic Partnership

Announced at Tableau Conference 2024, Tableau and Databricks make sharing and connecting better with two updates—a Tableau Delta Sharing connector and Explore in Tableau—which will help you share, connect to, and visualize your data more seamlessly and securely.

Tableau Delta Sharing

Databricks and the Linux Foundation developed Delta Sharing to provide an open, secure approach to data sharing and collaboration with the open-source protocol. We spent the last year bringing this joint integration to Tableau in that spirit of sharing and collaboration. Together, we’re delivering a powerful data-sharing capability to help customers seamlessly share data between Tableau and Databricks. Real-time sharing quickly refreshes analyses, helping teams collaborate and make data-driven decisions based on the most up-to-date information.

This connector’s value lies in its ability to simplify data sharing and collaboration, enabling teams to work together more efficiently and effectively.

Tableau Delta Sharing:

• Provides a powerful solution for sharing data between internal business units
• Enables collaboration with external partners and customers
• Shares live data across platforms, eliminating the need for replication
• Improves data governance with centralized access management

Empowering teams to access and analyze data from multiple sources helps create a more holistic view of their business.

The new connector leverages the power of Delta Lake, the open-source storage layer that enables scalable, reliable, and performant data pipelines. Delta Lake sits on top of existing data lake systems, such as Azure Data Lake Storage and Amazon S3. It provides a set of transactional features to help ensure data integrity, simplify data pipelines, and improve data quality and reliability. Delta Lake comprises many capabilities, including ACID transactions, schema enforcement, delta caching, and optimized data skips. It integrates with Tableau's data management features, including Tableau Prep, Tableau Catalog, and Tableau Server. These integrations provide end-to-end data management, sharing, and analytics.

The Tableau Delta Sharing connector is now generally available on the Tableau Exchange.

Explore in Tableau

We know time is money, and extracting insights from data is hard. In fact, 75% of IT organizations struggle to integrate data insights into user experiences. We’re building a new Explore in Tableau experience to help you uncover insights faster by connecting to your data with one click.

In the past, customers had to download and upload data source files manually. This removes you from the flow of work, making it more difficult to find the insights you need and, ultimately, act on those insights. Moving files across systems also undermines data governance practices, as it becomes challenging to track and monitor file transfers and changes when copied between different machines.

Explore in Tableau will help you connect to real-time, relevant data sources quickly and easily without leaving your browser. No more moving files, just instant analytics. Once you uncover new insights, you can easily save and share them with Tableau Cloud. If your exploration isn’t fruitful, one click returns you to your data discovery path. This ephemeral experience is unique and designed to keep you in the flow. Explore in Tableau will launch a pilot program in the coming months, with general availability soon after.

The new Delta Sharing connector and Explore in Tableau functionality are the next step in Tableau and Databricks’ shared vision. We’ve also improved the Databricks SQL connector. We've added support for advanced authentication modes, supporting the OAuth framework, and the ability to bring your own identity provider. Additional SQL dialect and driver updates improved performance by 20%.

Get started with Tableau and Databricks

We are excited to see what insights our customers uncover with these powerful tools. We’re listening to you and will continue building the best data Lakehouse solution on the market. The Tableau Delta Sharing connector is now available. Read more about the Tableau and Databricks solutions.