Open Source ERP Academy

Tableau Data Visualization (Business Intelligence)

The purpose of this page is to help you visualize your iDempiere data using Tableau. The vision is to create a set of reports that can be shared between our users. I divide Business Intelligence into two categories (1) Business Intelligence (BI) Platform and (2)Data Visualization. The big difference between these two options is the data warehouse. When you are implementing a BI platform, you are essentially creating a data warehouse that can include information from many different sources including iDempiere. The data warehouse is essentially a copy of the original transactional data formatted for reporting and integration with data from other sources. When you are implementing data visualization, you are looking at your original data source (not a copy) with a tool designed to make reporting on transactional data easier. This might seem confusing since both categories are technically labeled as BI, and both options include data visualization. However, the cost to create, maintain and derive meaningful insights from these categories is considerably different. Tableau (data visualization) is considered simple and easy to use. Jasper Server (BI Platform) requires much more work to build the metadata layer for spanning data sources. The only completely open source BI tool I have found is SpagoBI. Here is a discussion thread that will give you more details about SpagoBI. Tableau Learning and Pricing Tableau Trials Trial Resources Quick Start Guides – Breaks out various topics from the Online Help Guides