Does joins in Tableau effect performance?

Question

I have a Mysql database with tables A, B, C and D. A has a relationship between B, C and D, but B, C and D do not have a relationship among them. As to generate graphs in Tableau, data should exist like a table, so I created a joined relationship among them in following way: A-(right join B), A-(right join C), A-(right join D) so that all rows in B, C and D will be present. I would like to know if this kind of join effects database performance as a single table is being created in Tableau with all the fields in A, B, C, and D? Also, am I following the right method?

Answer 1

• The performance of your query will not be a factor once you are in the Desktop environment, If you create a Tableau data extract. From my experience "Large database" is pretty subjective. 

• Those who are using extracts of tens of millions of records with great success though. If your set is larger, I would still suggest trying the extract as a test because the performance of your query won't matter as much. Tableau will store data in memory but because of the tde setup, you can have more data than memory when necessary. If you want to read more on how extracts work and improve performance then check out this link from Tableau's blog. If hosted on server, TDE will also perform better.

• Refer to this for understanding more about TDEs