This is the first installment of Business Intelligence Product evaluations for the purpose of LIMS reporting. This week we will look at an application named Tableau, found at www.tableausoftware.com. To review, the intent of this series is to evaluate Business Intelligence tools for the purpose of complimenting a LIMS deployment with an external reporting solution that will require minimal maintenance and provide the highest degree of adaptation to business demands as the LIMS system evolves in Production. Additionally, I am not pretending to be an expert in any software package reviewed during this series. These observations are based on a few hours worth of tinkering time in order to get a general feel for the capabilities of the software and to help identify those tools that ought to be pursued further.
First Impressions
Of all of the tools that I have prototyped over the last few months, none of them is easier to use or has better graphics then Tableau. The installation of the product was very simple and free from any confusing choices. There was very little setup once the connection to the data source had been created and I found that I could be reviewing data in Tableau within fifteen minutes of starting the installation. Tableau simply digested the data and presented me options for viewing and manipulate the underlying data sets. The simple layout of the desktop application allowed for the simple creation of workbooks which could then be published to the server. Overall I was extremely comfortable with the application in a quick period of time and felt the choices for data display were more then adequate to graphically view the necessary data.
Positives
Tableau immediately engages the user with an incredible graphical display. Every element of the report is beautiful to look at and elegantly designed. The “Show Me!” button is a tremendous treat to evaluate how the requested data can be displayed in different formats.
Data consumption and classification is also handled with ease by Tableau. Either in connecting to database tables, consuming spreadsheets, or digesting text files, the application is able to determine which elements are suitable for measures, and which are appropriate for dimensions.
The drag and drop functions for displaying the data makes working with Tableau extremely user friendly. The ability to quickly drag elements between being rows and columns allows for quick restructuring of the data until the display captures the intended communication purpose.
The ability to design the data interaction in a desktop environment and then publish the designed workbook out to a server application allows for a cross platform deployment which users can further customize for their own purposes.
Negatives
In order to be useful for LIMS reporting, a significant amount of work is needed to stage the LIMS data correctly to be consumed by Tableau as LIMS data models are optimized for the application and not for reporting. The hierarchy of the LIMS data will need to be flattened and prepared in the form of database views prior to consumption and display by Tableau. The simplistic work flow of Tableau is a delight to use, however detailed planning and design would be necessary to provide this rich and easy to use experience to the end user.
Ad-Hoc Reporting Capability
The server portion of the Tableau installation does allow for automatic updating of the data available to the user. This does increase the usefulness of the data as it can be implemented against a live database, however I do not believe that Tableau could be considered a true “ad-hoc” business intelligence tool. Tableau aggregates the data and presents it to the user in the relationships pre-determined by the application. I can find no manner to present to the user a data structure that has been supplemented with meta-data to indicate data relationships and therefore allow the user to operate within these definitions. Although I do believe that a complete view based definition of the data could be designed and implemented that will closely match an ad-hoc approach, it will still be based on pre-designed pathways through the data that the users are forced to use.
LIMS Implementation Conclusions
It is very hard to ignore the wonderful user experience available by Tableau. I would love to work with this project more as a part of a LIMS reporting implementation to truly test the ability to satisfy end user requirements. I am concerned that the incredible graphics will begin to wane if there are issues with presenting data in a consistently usable manner for every day lab operations. I am convinced that the ease of deployment to a web server will require strictly documented SOPs due to the regulated data, and I also believe that the lack of true ad-hoc modeling will not completely eliminate the need for report system maintenance. While I don’t believe that this product deserves and immediate implementation nod, I believe that a small scale pilot program would be worth the effort to deduce the necessary steps to provide the rich reporting environment that is Tableau.
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