Configure the Splunk ODBC driver to work with Tableau Desktop on macOS

Configure the Splunk Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) Driver to get Splunk platform data into Tableau Desktop.

Connect Tableau to your Splunk platform instance

1. In Tableau Desktop, open a new workbook.
2. In the Connect menu, select Other Databases (ODBC).
3. In the Other Databases (ODBC) window, perform the following tasks:
   1. In the Connect using section of the window, select Splunk ODBC from the DSN drop-down menu.
   2. In the Connection attributes section of the window, verify the username and password of your Splunk platform instance, and click Sign In.
   3. (Optional) If you want to connect to a different Splunk platform instance from the one you originally configured, add the Splunk URL and port in the String Extras: field. For example, URL=https://localhost:8089
4. After Tableau desktop has connected to your Splunk platform instance, select All from the Database drop-down menu. Under Table, click the search icon with an empty input.
5. Click Load
6. Drag the saved searches you want from the list of Saved Search list into the Drag tables here.

Filter support limitations

Using filters in Tableau Desktop is equivalent to creating subsearches in the Splunk software. The more subsearches that you create, the more likely it is that performance can drag. Using Tableau Desktop to create Splunk software searches obscures the actual search commands that the Splunk ODBC Driver translates from SQL.

Creating multiple dimension filters using Tableau might have a performance impact, especially when working with a large set of results. There is a limit to how many results are returned by subsearch and how long a subsearch can take. See About subsearches in the Splunk Enterprise Admin Manual' for more information.

For better performance, push as much filtering as you can into the saved search itself within the Splunk software rather than implementing extensive filtering in Tableau.