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Version Control for Tableau

  • What is the best practice for version control of Tableau projects?
  • If a change in the Tableau project requires changes in the database (in my case, RedShift) and in the ETL (in my case my python script), how can I manage versions of all of them together so that I can go back to the previous version in case of a problem?

Thanks!

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EDIT - Tableau has added version control features to the Tableau server since this answer was originally provided.

  • Tableau does not currently provide version control features. There are several ideas on the Tableau community forum that offer integration with version control software, such as Git , or version control, which will be baked on the Tableau server . Since Tableau books are only XML files, then you can use some form of software for version control for books stored on a shared drive, as well as for publishing permissions that should be restricted by the site / project administrator.
  • Theoretically, a script can bind all of these components together. If a particular version of the Tableau workbook was linked to a specific database and ETL change (although I'm not sure which part of the Python script is playing here), then the previous version of the workbook can be extracted from the original control and republished as part of the rollback
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Another way to roll back to a previous version is to run Tableau's own backup command immediately before applying any changes to the project. This will provide a snapshot of the server status during the change.

tabadmin backup backupfilename

In Table 8.0 and earlier, the server must first be stopped, via tabadmin stop

Thus, your existing database and ETL change deployment mechanism can be expanded to invoke a backup command and use a backup name that has an assembly or release number added to the file name.

Starting such a backup of the server may not be as difficult as you think, if your books use all live connections and not cached or downloaded data, the backup command is fast and should complete in a few seconds.

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