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Tableau

Tableau Desktop connects to Quack on Demand through the built-in Other Databases (JDBC) connector, driving the Apache Arrow Flight SQL JDBC driver. There is no custom Tableau connector to install: you drop the driver jar in Tableau's driver folder and point the generic JDBC connector at the same URL any JDBC client uses.

Tableau ──JDBC──▶ Arrow Flight SQL JDBC driver ──Flight SQL──▶ Quack edge (:31338, TLS)

This page covers installing the driver, connecting, and the one macOS/Linux gotcha that makes the connection fail in Tableau while it works in DBeaver. For the server-side tenant / pool and auth contracts the URL rides on, see Connecting clients and Authenticating.

Prerequisites​

  • Tableau Desktop (2021.x or later ships the "Other Databases (JDBC)" connector).
  • A JRE-compatible Apache Arrow Flight SQL JDBC driver jar. Tableau bundles its own Java runtime (Java 17), so you only need the driver jar, not a separate JDK.
  • Quack credentials: a username/password, or a bearer JWT via the driver's token option.

Install the driver​

Download the Apache Arrow Flight SQL JDBC driver jar (org.apache.arrow:flight-sql-jdbc-driver) from Maven Central, for example flight-sql-jdbc-driver-19.0.0.jar, and copy it into Tableau's driver directory:

PlatformDriver directory
macOS~/Library/Tableau/Drivers (or /Library/Tableau/Drivers)
WindowsC:\Program Files\Tableau\Drivers
Linux (Tableau Server)/opt/tableau/tableau_driver/jdbc

Restart Tableau after copying the jar so it is picked up.

Connect​

  1. Connect -> To a Server -> More -> Other Databases (JDBC).
  2. URL: the full Flight SQL URL (see below).
  3. Dialect: SQL92.
  4. Username / Password: the edge credential. You can leave these blank if you put user / password in the URL instead; either works.
  5. Sign In.

The entire connection is expressed in the URL, exactly as for any JDBC client:

jdbc:arrow-flight-sql://localhost:31338?useEncryption=true&disableCertificateVerification=true&user=alice&password=demo-alice&tenant=acme&pool=bi
  • useEncryption=true matches edge TLS being on (the default); disableCertificateVerification=true accepts the auto-generated self-signed cert. Drop the latter once a CA-signed cert is installed (see TLS).
  • user / password are the edge credential.
  • tenant / pool route the connection. They are required on every connection.

A system-realm superuser adds superuser=true to the same URL (the tenant and pool params stay in place because they still drive query routing):

jdbc:arrow-flight-sql://localhost:31338?useEncryption=true&disableCertificateVerification=true&user=root&password=demo-root&tenant=acme&pool=bi&superuser=true

See Connecting clients for the full table of URL parameters QoD reads; the driver and URL are identical to the DBeaver recipe.

Troubleshooting: "Bad Connection" / connection refused to the wrong IP​

Symptom: Tableau reports "Bad Connection: Tableau could not connect to the data source", and the Tableau log (~/Documents/My Tableau Repository/Logs/log.txt) contains a line like:

failed to connect to all addresses; last error: UNKNOWN:
ipv4:192.168.1.113:56628: Failed to connect to remote host: Connection refused
context: SendInitRequest (GrpcProtocolProxy.cpp)

where 192.168.1.113 is your machine's LAN address, not 127.0.0.1. The same URL connects fine from DBeaver.

Cause: this failure is not the Flight SQL connection to QoD. Tableau's "Other Databases (JDBC)" connector runs the driver in a separate Java Protocol Server sidecar process and talks to it over gRPC on localhost. The sidecar binds the loopback interface (127.0.0.1). If localhost does not resolve to 127.0.0.1 on your machine, Tableau's main process dials the wrong address, the sidecar handshake is refused, and the connection never reaches QoD. DBeaver loads the driver in its own JVM with no sidecar, so it never makes this loopback hop, which is why it works there.

Check what localhost resolves to:

ping -c1 localhost      # must report 127.0.0.1

If it reports a LAN IP, your hosts file has remapped localhost. Fix it so localhost maps only to the loopback address:

  • macOS / Linux: edit /etc/hosts
  • Windows: edit C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts

The relevant lines must read:

127.0.0.1   localhost
::1         localhost

Remove or comment out any line that points localhost at a non-loopback address (for example 192.168.1.113 localhost). If you genuinely need that LAN IP under a name, give it its own hostname; do not override localhost.

Flush the resolver cache and fully restart Tableau:

# macOS
sudo dscacheutil -flushcache; sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder

ping -c1 localhost should now report 127.0.0.1, and the connection will succeed.

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