When to use Tableau Prep Builder versus Tableau Desktop for creating our data models
Tableau Prep Builder and Tableau Desktop are the two foundational components for data modeling on the Tableau platform. Each has a place and they overlap in functionality in many areas.
Tableau Prep Builder is the go-to product when you need to transform your data. It uniquely allows for cleaning data, particularly in cleaning up string fields. It has machine learning algorithms to fix dirty data. An example is a field coming from a source where people can type in values such as customer names. It also has features that allow for pivoting rows to columns, adding new rows, and outputting models to destinations beyond Tableau.
Tableau Desktop is the go-to product when you need live connections to your data and when you are combining data that is at different levels of aggregation. Tableau Desktop is also the only place, along with the corresponding web interface, where we can build hierarchies...
