Author: mattmiller986

Defusing Row Level Security in Your Extracts (Before They Blow Up) Part Two

This documentation is for versions of Tableau prior to 2018.3

If you are using the 2018.3 version of Tableau or later, you’ll want to implement Row Level Security using Multi-Table Extracts and the “Standard” Method of Row Level Security. Read all about them at

How to set up your Database for Row Level Security in Tableau

If you are on a version prior to 2018.3, continue

EDITOR’S NOTE 2018-05-17: At the current time, it has been determined that the CONTAINS() solution below performs very poorly in the Hyper extract system in all releases of Tableau 10.5 and the 2018.1.0 release. The performance issues have been corrected in the 2018.1.1 release, but will not appear in any version of 10.5. If you are currently using it in a pre-10.5 version of Tableau, please only upgrade to 2018.1.1 and after.

In Part Two of the series (see Part One here), we’ll go through two solutions to Row Level Security that are a bit more programmatic and require some work outside of just Tableau Desktop calculations, but our often the recommended solution due to their speed and flexibility.

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Defusing Row Level Security in Tableau Data Extracts (Before They Blow Up) Part 1

This documentation is for versions of Tableau prior to 2018.3. What are you doing here? You’ll want to implement Row Level Security using Multi-Table Extracts and the “Standard” Method of Row Level Security. Read all about them at:

How to set up your Database for Row Level Security in Tableau

Quick Explanation of Row Level Security in Tableau

If you are on a version prior to 2018.3, please turn around and plan an upgrade path

Matt Miller works at Tableau as a sales engineer along with Bryant. He’s guest posting this excellent set of articles, with hopefully more to come.

Note: This and Part 2 document some older techniques for achieving RLS in a much more limited version of Tableau that existed in the past. If you made it past the red text above, should follow their instructions. If you are just here for fun, skip right to Part 2, then come follow the instructions above in red.

A wise man who runs a well-respected Tableau blog once wrote:tdebomb

“To be secure and perform well, you must use a Live Connection to your database. Extracts will be too large if you join a security table that is one-to-many to your data table (we say they “blow up” to dissuade people).”

What happens when a live connection is less than desirable for a use case, or downright impossible? Are we to let our Tableau Server users swim in a sea of insecure extracts (‘Do my columns look wide in this?’) ? Certainly not. The methods used to secure extracts differ from most currently published Row Level Security setups or walk-throughs, as the design is centered around minimizing duplication of rows to ensure performance in both creating and using them.

Since my education in uncountable infinite sets ended in undergrad, this blog won’t try to cover every niche business logic and data security use case, but instead provide ideas and tools to take back you your own environment and mold to your needs.

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