Connect Tableau to Oracle MySQL Database Service powered by Heatwave
We learned in the previous article how to securely expose your private database on a Public IP via MySQL Router. Today we will take advantage of this setup and connect various tableau deployments to a cloud-managed MySQL deployment.
Why? The answer is simple: HeatWave
HeatWave is a new, integrated, high-performance analytics engine for MySQL Database Service. HeatWave accelerates MySQL performance by 400X for analytics queries, scales out to thousands of cores, and is 2.7X faster at one-third the cost of Amazon Redshift. MySQL Database Service, with HeatWave, is the only service that enables database admins and app developers to run OLTP and OLAP workloads directly from their MySQL database, eliminating the need for complex, time-consuming, and expensive data movement and integration with a separate analytics database. The service is optimized for and exclusively available in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).
MySQL does not need any kind of introduction, it’s simply put the world’s most popular open-source database. You can find it under many different names Amazone RDS, Google Cloud SQL, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, Azure Database for MySQL, and many more, but the engine is pretty much the same in all of these services.
Oracle MySQL Database Service is a fully-managed database service that lets developers quickly develop and deploy secure, cloud-native applications using the world’s most popular open-source database. MySQL Database Service is the only MySQL cloud service with an integrated, high-performance analytics engine — HeatWave — that enables customers to run sophisticated analytics directly against their operational MySQL databases, eliminating the need for complex, time-consuming, and expensive data movement and integration with a separate analytics database. Optimized for and exclusively available in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), MySQL Database Service is 100% built, managed, and supported by the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and MySQL engineering teams.
Of course, you can host MySQL on-premise but, should you?
The importance of a managed service
Prerequisites:
- To start with you should have completed my previous tutorial on how to create a MySQL Database Service on OCI. If you missed it, check it out here! You will be able to complete it in less than 10 minutes!
- A Tableau valid license (cloud or desktop), even a trial account will do it.
Connect Tableau Cloud to MySQL
From the homepage, select Create Workbook. A new window will appear and you should select the tab Connectors and then select MySQL from the list as shown in the images below.
You will now need to fill in the connection details as shown below.
First, you need to input the Public IP of the machine where you installed MySQL Router and then the MySQL default port 3306. After, the DB_NAME with username and password as per the image below.
Once you filled the form with the correct credentials, just click sign-in and you will start seeing the database’s tables.
Congrats! You are now able to securely connect to your MySQL Database Instance
Wait! What if I have Tableau Desktop?
You will need to add two ingredients that depend on your system:
- iODBC Driver Manager[http://www.iodbc.org/dataspace/doc/iodbc/wiki/iodbcWiki/WelcomeVisitors]
- MySQL Connector directly from the MySQL Community page here [https://dev.mysql.com/downloads/connector/odbc/]
Once you completed these steps you can select MySQL from the Data source tab on the left and connect in the exact same way we used for the cloud version (and as shown from the images below).
To learn about the Always Free cloud resources check out here!
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I am Roberto Di Bella, Data Scientist Advocate at Oracle. Helping data scientists, developers and companies be successful on Oracle Cloud.
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