MongoDB, Tableau Expand Integration With BI Link

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Database vendor MongoDB is again partnering with visual analytics specialist Tableau Software on an upgraded business intelligence connector designed to extend the merger of the two big data platforms to leverage Tableau’s visualization capabilities on enterprise data stored on the MongoDB system.

The partners said Tuesday (Aug. 8) MongoDB’s Connector for Business Intelligence 2.0 has been certified by Tableau (NYSE: DATA) as a “named” connector. The combination would allow users to visually analyze JSON-like data structures associated with applications running in MongoDB’s enterprise platform.

The BI connector also is intended to store and visualize data in a way that is scalable, noted MongoDB CTO Eliot Horowitz, allowing users to analyze data generated by applications running on Tableau’s platform.

The collaboration also aims to wrangle the huge amounts of unstructured data being generated by sources such as social media. “Social, mobile, rich web apps and other sources of modern applications that generate unstructured data are the future, and it’s become business critical to provide best-in-class analytics to that data,” Todd Talkington, Tableau’s director of technology partnerships, noted in a statement. The partnership gives the company’s customers quick access to visual analysis of data stored in MongoDB, Talkington added.

The latest deal expands collaboration between the two vendors that extends back several years. Responding to the huge amounts of unstructured data, the partners disclosed plans in 2015 to work together to visually analyze JSON-like data structures directly in the MongoDB NoSQL document database.

At the time, they noted that a growing percentage of unstructured and semi-structured data is stored in the JSON format. Web applications, mobile and Internet of Things devices along with social media rely heavily on JSON data. An earlier connector was used to create an initial relational view for defining JSON data. It then converted an SQL statement to a MongoDB query or a “find” operation based on a query.

The expanded collaboration with Tableau also underscores continuing efforts by MongoDB to build more analytics directly into the NoSQL database. “It’s a function of customer demand,” MongoDB CEO Dev Ittycheria noted during a company event in June. “What we’re seeing is a lot of these investments in data lakes have not really yielded the success that they thought [they would get]. The data lake was supposed to be panacea to these analytics problems, and they’re realizing it’s not.”

Along with Tableau, the database specialist also offers an SQL-based BI connector that allows users to crunch data via tools from Qlik and others. Meanwhile, the New York-based database vendor also offers a graph query engine that enables users to explore connections among different entities stored digitally in the database.

MongoDB also has expanded into the cloud, offering its Atlas NoSQL database as a service on the Amazon Web Services (NASDAQ: AMZN), Google (NASDAQ: GOOGL) and Microsoft Azure (NASDAQ: MSFT) clouds.

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