Feature-wise Comparison of Tableau with Python, Power BI, and Excel

Tableau is a data visualization and analysis tool which is popular among the data science community.

For better understanding, differences between Tableau and other similar tools are provided below.

Tableau	Excel
Mainly for visualizations & creating dashboards	Spreadsheet tool mainly for calculations
Can handle Big data	Small data
Can connect to Python & R	-

Tableau	Python
Data visualization tool	Programming language for Data Analytics and visualization
For basic use, programming is not needed	Simple programming language

Tableau	Microsoft Power BI
Can handle Big data	Small data
Slightly difficult	Easy

Features of Tableau

• It helps to develop visualizations

• It allow user to work with large volume of data

• It is widely used in business where making data driven decisions are more common

• It helps to create dashboards

• It can extract data from various sources including cloud

  
  

  Some of the Tableau products

  Tableau Desktop	Largely used for business intelligence Visualizing large data For creating Worksheets,dashboard and stories on files/server which can be shared
  Tableau Prep	Tool designed to prepare data - for data cleaning before performing analysis
  Tableau Server	Used to publish works prepared using Tableau desktop
  Tableau online	Analytics platform fully hosted on cloud Dashboards can be published and shared with anyone Dashboards are accessible on browser and mobile app

  
  
  

  File types in Tableau

  Tableau workbook(.twb)	Stores visualization but not source data
  Tableau data source(.tds)	Stores all information required to access a datasource in server
  Tableau bookmark(.tbm)	Tableau workbook is connected to worksheet in another tableau workbook
  Tableau extract(.tde)	On a large dataset, if aggregate calculation is done for a filtered subset then this file type stores data as filtered and aggregated extract
  Tableau packaged workbook(.twbx)	Keeps both extracted data and visualisations Hence, this file type is used when it is necessary to share both data and visualisations Visualizations can be viewed in Tableau reader/Tableau online