When it comes to metadata, most business intelligence (BI) platforms go one of two ways: either model the entire enterprise as a first step, or model nothing. Many “next generation” business intelligence platforms claim that one of their innovations is to do away with metadata entirely—which falls apart when platform usage spreads beyond a small team of experts and into mainstream, enterprise-scale deployments.
Metadata in existing systems should be leveraged when beneficial, but business users don’t need to understand metadata to be successful. With these points in mind, Tableau has created a simple, elegant and powerful metadata system known as the Data Source. Two layers of abstraction and a run time model (VizQL Model) give the business user flexibility while allowing for enterprise-wide metadata.
This paper will show you how Tableau's metadata model is seamless, approachable, and transparent, to an extent that new customers often believe Tableau does not have a metadata layer at all.
