Tableau connection to Spark SQL

Question

I am trying to connect Tableau Desktop 10 (mac) to Spark SQL 2.1 (on centos 7 server). I am connecting via Simba ODBC driver with Authentication = Username and Username = . It doesn't give any error but I don't see the tables which are available in Hive. After searching and choosing 'default' schema, and searching for tables, I only see default (default.default) table. However, when I use beeline on the server to connect to Spark SQL, the hive tables are visible.

If I use the custom SQL feature I can query the tables and use the data, but I still have no way to list the tables in Tableau.

I am not sure if the issue is on Tableau side or Spark side. I'd greatly appreciate any help with troubleshooting this issue.

Answer 1

• The reason for this behavior is the following:

  • In spark 2.0, show tables output format is : 'tableName', 'isTemporary' 

  • In Spark 2.1 show tables output format is 'database', 'tablename', 'isTemporary'

• Now Tableau 10.2.3 or greater are able to parse the output from spark2.1, but 10.2.1 and less are unable to parse this new output format.