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Tableau connects to Honeydew via JDBC or ODBC drivers using the Trino protocol.

Tableau Cloud / Server

Tableau Server Connector & Driver setup

You can skip this step if using Tableau Cloud.
Follow these steps to connect to Honeydew:
If you are running Tableau Server as a multi-node cluster, you must install the JDBC driver and the Honeydew connector on each node.
  1. If Tableau is open, close it, and exit.
  2. Download the latest Trino JDBC driver.
  3. Place the JDBC driver file in the following location according to your operating system:
    • Linux: /opt/tableau/tableau_driver/jdbc (if the jdbc folder does not exist, create it first)
    • Windows: C:\Program Files\Tableau\Drivers
    Do not store more than one Trino JDBC driver in the directory. Delete any older Trino drivers when you update to a newer version. Connections to all connected data sources are made through the JDBC driver.
  4. Get the Honeydew.taco file from Honeydew support (reach out to support@honeydew.cloud to get one).
  5. Move the data connector Honeydew.taco file to the following location:
    • Linux: /opt/tableau/connectors (if the connectors folder does not exist, create it first)
    • Windows: C:\Program Files\Tableau\Connectors
  6. Restart Tableau Server and log in.
  7. Click Create, then select Workbook. In the Connect to Data pane, click the Connectors tab.
  8. Follow the steps to set up a new datasource. If this is your first time using this connector, a Connector Details dialog will pop up. Click the Install and Restart Tableau button.

Adding an OAuth Client For Honeydew

If you would like to use OAuth (SSO) to connect to Honeydew, you need to register an OAuth client in Tableau Cloud or Tableau Server. This step is optional but recommended if you want each Tableau user to connect to Honeydew using their own Honeydew credentials.
  1. Sign in to Tableau Server as a site admin and navigate to the Settings page
  2. Under the General tab, scroll down to the OAuth Clients Registry section
  3. Click Add OAuth Client
  4. In Connection Type, select the Honeydew Semantic Layer by Honeydew Data option
  5. For OAuth Provider, keep default
  6. Leave OAuth Instance URL empty
  7. For Client ID, enter honeydew-jdbc-connector
  8. For Client Secret, enter honeydew-jdbc-connector (or any other non-empty value - it is not used)
  9. Make a note of the Redirect URL - you will need to send it to Honeydew support to enable OAuth for your Tableau instance
  10. Click Add OAuth Client

API Access Setup

Honeydew connects to Tableau Cloud or Server using Tableau REST APIs. It uses Tableau Personal Access Tokens.
1

Enable PAT in Tableau Cloud or Server

  1. Sign in to Tableau Cloud or Tableau Server as a site admin and navigate to the Settings page.
  2. Under the Personal Access Tokens section, select the Enable personal access tokens check box if not already selected.
2

Set a PAT in Tableau for Honeydew

  1. Sign in as the user that will be used for Honeydew API connectivity
    The Tableau user for API must have the ability to change and update published data sources.
  2. Create a PAT for the Honeydew connectivity using My Account Settings
  3. Under Personal Access Tokens, enter a descriptive name (i.e. honeydew_api) for your token in the Token Name field, and then click Create Token.
  4. In the Personal Access Token dialog box, click the Copy Secret button.
  5. Keep the token name and the secret for the next step.
3

Configure Honeydew with the PAT

  1. Sign in to Honeydew with a user that has administrator privileges
  2. Open the user settings menu
  3. Navigate to TableauSettings
  4. Enter the following information
  • Server: the server URL, i.e. https://10ax.online.tableau.com if your Tableau domain is https://10ax.online.tableau.com/t/yoursite/
  • Site: the site name, i.e. yoursite if your Tableau domain is https://10ax.online.tableau.com/t/yoursite/
  • The PAT name and secret as generated in the previous step
4

Enable Tableau Catalog Integration

If you have the Tableau Data Management feature enabled in your Tableau account, please ask support@honeydew.ai to enable the Tableau Catalog Integration.
Honeydew synchronizes all metadata (such as metric descriptions) to a Tableau Data Source.When Tableau Catalog is enabled, Honeydew synchronizes metadata there as well.

Setting up a New Data Source

Tableau Data Sources are mapped to a Honeydew workspace, branch and domain.
Once published, data sources can be refreshed from Honeydew (see next section).
There are a few ways to create a new data source managed by Honeydew:

Setting up a New Data Source in Honeydew UI

This is the easiest and the recommended way to create a new data source in Tableau.
  1. In Honeydew UI, go to the Branch menu → Branch IntegrationsTableauSync to Tableau.
  2. Select the domain to use for the data source.
  3. Select the Tableau project to place the data source in.
  4. Provide a name for the data source.
  5. Click Publish.
  6. Open the data source in Tableau Cloud or Tableau Server.
  7. Provide the credentials for the data source.
    1. For Tableau Cloud and Tableau Server, you can either use an API Key to connect to Honeydew through a central service account, or use OAuth (SSO) to allow each user to connect to Honeydew using their own credentials. In cases where you want to make sure each user uses their own Snowflake credentials, and have defined per-user Snowflake credentials in Honeydew, use the OAuth (SSO) method. Make sure to register the OAuth client as described above.
    2. For enhanced security and audit trail, consider using per-user API keys to maintain individual user identification and enable integration with per-user Snowflake credentials.

Setting up a New Data Source in Tableau Desktop

  1. In Honeydew UI, go to the Branch menu → Branch IntegrationsTableauDownload datasource.
  2. Select the domain to use for the data source.
  3. Click Download to download the data source file.
  4. Open the data source file in Tableau Desktop and provide the credentials for the data source.
    1. For Tableau Cloud and Tableau Server, you can either use an API Key to connect to Honeydew through a central service account, or use OAuth (SSO) to allow each user to connect to Honeydew using their own credentials. In cases where you want to make sure each user uses their own Snowflake credentials, and have defined per-user Snowflake credentials in Honeydew, use the OAuth (SSO) method. Make sure to register the OAuth client as described above.
  5. Publish the data source to Tableau Cloud or Tableau Server.

Setting up a New Data Source in Tableau Cloud or Tableau Server

  1. Create a new data source: NewPublished Data Source
  2. Choose data from Connectors
    Choose a Trino connection (use Starburst Enterprise in Tableau Cloud). You can connect with either an API key (or username and password) or OAuth (SSO).
    Use an API Key to connect through a central service account, or use OAuth (SSO) so each user connects to Honeydew using their own credentials. The OAuth method is useful when you have defined per-user Snowflake credentials in Honeydew and want each user to use their own. To use OAuth, first register the OAuth client as described above.
    With an API key (or username and password), provide the following:
    With OAuth (SSO), provide the following:
    • Server: jdbc.honeydew.cloud
    • Port: 443
    • Authentication: choose OAuth (SSO)
    • OAuth Instance URL: https://jdbc.honeydew.cloud (use your own JDBC URL if your organization uses a custom hostname - it must match the JDBC Server endpoint)
    • Require SSL: check this option
    If your organization uses a custom hostname for the JDBC connection, you can locate it in the Honeydew UI, under the JDBC section in Settings.
    Honeydew SQL interface uses the Trino protocol for Tableau connectivity. There is no actual Trino running in Honeydew - all queries are executed in Snowflake.
The following steps are same for Tableau Cloud, Tableau Server and Tableau Desktop:
  1. Upon connecting, choose a Catalog
    • Catalog for the production branch is the name of the workspace (for example tpch_demo for TPC-H demo).
    • Catalog for a development branch called branch is workspace__branch (for example tpch_demo__dev for the dev branch in tpch_demo workspace).
  2. With a catalog, choose a Schema and a Table
    • Schema for domains is called domains, and tables are domain names
    • Schema for all of the semantic layer at once is called world, and the table name is world as well.
    Use domains to control the metadata and data availible in a particular Data Source
  3. Run Publish Data Source.
    Data from Honeydew can be queried by Tableau at this point, but it does not have metadata yet, like folders, descriptions or Tableau-specific metadata.The next step adds metadata.
The following step is supported only in Tableau Cloud and Tableau Server (not in Tableau Desktop):
  1. From within Honeydew UI, choose the same workspace and branch, and run TableauSync to Tableau
    1. If you have not set up Tableau API connectivity with a PAT, this step will fail
    2. If you are using Tableau Server, you might have to configure your network so Honeydew can reach your Tableau Server instance. See the network requirements in API Access Setup.

Using a Published Data Source

Workbooks in Tableau can operate on Published Data Sources. To use a Honeydew-managed Tableau Data Source:
  1. Navigate to the published data source
  2. Create a new workbook: NewWorkbook Using This Data Source
  3. Enter your Honeydew credentials in the Workbook
  4. Choose Group By Folder in the workbook view
    Honeydew semantic layer presents itself to Tableau as a single virtual table. To see the entity structure move to folder view, as Honeydew will put every attribute or metric in its corresponding entity folder.Attributes or metrics with a user-defined folder will be placed there instead of their entity folder.

Refreshing a Published Data Source

Changes in calculations reflect automatically and immediately in Tableau.
Connect a Tableau to a development branch, and any logic changes in Honeydew will immediately reflect in your workbook.That allows for a quick experimentation workflow with Tableau on Honeydew semantics.
Any other change will not reflect in Tableau until running TableauSync to Tableau. In particular, following changes requires syncing:
  1. Changing metadata: descriptions, folders, display names and Tableau-specific metadata
  2. Adding new attributes or metrics
  3. Renaming or removing attributes or metrics
  4. Changing the entities or fields that participate in a domain
Once a published data source is refreshed, all workbooks using that data source update as well.
In an open workbook, might need to click the data source → Refresh data source to see changes.

Tableau Desktop

When working with Tableau Desktop, you can use a local data source or a published data source from Tableau Cloud or Server.

Connector & Driver setup

Use the following steps to connect in Tableau Desktop, either to a local Honeydew data source or to one published on Tableau Server:
  1. If Tableau Desktop is open, close it, and exit.
  2. Download the latest Trino JDBC driver.
  3. Place the JDBC driver file in the following location according to your operating system:
    • MacOS: ~/Library/Tableau/Drivers (if the folder does not exist, create it first)
    • Windows: C:\Program Files\Tableau\Drivers Do not store more than one Trino JDBC driver in the directory. Delete any older Trino drivers when you update to a newer version. Connections to all connected data sources are made through the JDBC driver.
  4. Get the Honeydew.taco file from Honeydew support (reach out to support@honeydew.cloud to get one).
  5. Move the data connector Honeydew.taco file to the following location:
    • MacOS: ~/Documents/My Tableau Repository/Connectors (if the Connectors folder does not exist, create it first)
    • Windows: C:\Users\<user>\Documents\My Tableau Repository\Connectors
  6. Restart Tableau Desktop and log in.
If you would like to connect Tableau Desktop to a data source published to Tableau Cloud, you would also need to install a Trino connector:
  1. If Tableau Desktop is open, close it, and exit.
  2. Download the latest Trino (“Starburst”) connector from the Tableau exchange website. You might be required to login to your Tableau account to download the connector.
    If you are using a Tableau Desktop version older than 2024.2, please contact Tableau support to get an earlier version of the driver.
  3. Move the downloaded data connector file to the following location:
    • MacOS: ~/Documents/My Tableau Repository/Connectors (if the Connectors folder does not exist, create it first)
    • Windows: C:\Users\<user>\Documents\My Tableau Repository\Connectors
  4. Restart Tableau Desktop and log in.

Local Data Source

Setting up a New Local Data Source

A local data source is only availible on the machine where Tableau Desktop is installed. If operating in a shared environment, use the Published Data Source flow.
To set up a local data source on a chosen workspace, branch and domain: In Honeydew,
  1. Choose the workspace and branch to use.
  2. Choose the domain to use.
  3. Download data source from Honeydew by running run TableauDownload datasource
In your desktop environment,
  1. Copy the data source to the Datasources folder under your Tableau repository
    • Usually in your Documents/My Tableau Respository/Datasources/<Tableau Version>/<Locale>/
See more information about Saved Data Sources in Tableau Desktop Documentation.

Using a Local Data Source

  1. Open Tableau Desktop
  2. Choose the data source from Saved Data Sources
  3. Provide your Honeydew credentials when instructed
  4. Edit and save your workbook

Refreshing a Local Data Source

Changes in calculations reflect automatically and immediately in Tableau.
Connect a Tableau to a development branch, and any logic changes in Honeydew will immediately reflect in your workbook.That allows for a quick experimentation workflow with Tableau on Honeydew semantics.
  1. Download a data source from Honeydew to the same location in your Tableau repository (you may overwrite the previous version)
  2. In a workbook based on the local data source, click DataNew Data Source and choose from saved data source the new version
  3. Now you have two data sources: old and new. Click the old data source.
  4. Click DataReplace Data Source and switch the old to the new version.
  5. Delete the old data source

Using a Published Data Source from Tableau Cloud or Server

  1. Open Tableau Desktop New Workbook
  2. Choose Search For DataTableau Server
  3. Connect with your Tableau Cloud credentials
  4. Choose the published data source maintained by Honeydew and click Connect
  5. Provide your Honeydew credentials when instructed
If the published data source has changed, click the data source → Refresh to see changes in a local workbook in Tableau Desktop connected to the published data source.