When people think of Tableau, they usually picture dashboards, visualizations, and drag-and-drop analytics. In this traditional setup, users explore data by interacting with dashboards: charts, filters, tooltips, etc. But what if you don’t need the visuals at all—just the data behind them, with all the same calculations, filters, and logic already applied?
That’s where the VizQL Data Service (VDS) comes in.
Rather than returning charts and visuals, it taps into Tableau’s VizQL engine to give you just the data behind any published view.. Instead of clicking through a dashboard, you can get the same data directly—like a spreadsheet or text file—by sending a simple request from another app or script.
In this post, we’ll explore what the VizQL Data Service is, what you can do with it, and how it fits into the broader Tableau ecosystem. A hands-on example is coming soon in a follow-up article!
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