Managing Queries

Queries are automatically generated every time you add a field to a shelf and interact with the
view. Tableau offers several ways you can manage these queries once they are sent to the
underlying data source.
Automatic Updates
Cancel Query
Abandoned Queries
Precision Warnings

Automatic Updates
When you place a field on a shelf, Tableau generates the view by querying the data source. If
you are creating a dense data view that involves many fields, the queries might be time
consuming and significantly degrade system performance. In this case, you can instruct
Tableau to turn off automatic updates.
By default, automatic updates are turned on and the toolbar button is highlighted .
However, it is sometimes more efficient for Tableau to execute the queries you need for your
final view, rather than for every intermediate step required to compose that view. You can turn
off updates by pressing F10 or the Automatic Updates toolbar button.
While automatic updates are turned off, you can still update the view at any time by clicking F9
or the Run Update on the toolbar. This way, you can update your data view at an
intermediate step. It is possible to enter an invalid state when automatic updates are turned off.
When this happens, the view is desaturated and invalid commands are disabled. The view and
commands become available again when you click Run Update on the toolbar.
For example, the view below has automatic updates turned off. When the aggregation for Profit
is changed from a summation to an average, the view is desaturated to let you know that you
have made a change to the view that has made the current view invalid.

Automatic Updates and Dashboards
You configure automatic updates on a per-view basis. This means that you can have a
dashboard where some views are updating automatically, and others are not. But when
dashboards are published to Tableau Server, automatic updates affect either none of the views
in a dashboard, or all of the views.

Cancel Query
This command is used any time you want to stop a query that is in process. You may want to
cancel a query that is taking a long time to complete due to the size of the data source. When a
query is taking a long time to complete, a progress dialog box opens.
Click Cancel in the Processing Request dialog box.

After canceling a query the view becomes invalid because it is in an in-between state. The result
is a blank view although all your fields are still on the shelves. To resume working with Tableau,
alter the view in anyway and allow the query to complete.
Canceling a large number of queries can result in performance degradation in the underlying
database. Although the query has been abandoned by Tableau, it is still executing on the
database.

Abandoned Queries
When you cancel a query in Tableau, the database is told to stop processing the query.
However, some databases do not support cancel (MS Excel, MS Access, Essbase, Microsoft
Analysis Services 2000). If you cancel a query using one of these types of data sources, the
query is abandoned by Tableau but is still running in the background and using resources.
When you have abandoned queries, an indicator appears in the bottom right corner of the
workbook showing the number of queries still running . As queries in the background
complete, the number will go down. It is important to monitor the number of queries running and
not let the number get too high, otherwise you will see performance degradation of both Tableau
and the underlying database.
Text, Microsoft Excel, and Microsoft Access data sources may be temporarily unavailable after
canceling a query because of a lock performed internally. You may have to wait until the
abandoned query has completed before re-connecting.

Precision Warnings
When you add a field to a view that contains values with more precision than Tableau can
model, a warning icon is displayed in the bottom right corner of the status bar. For example,
a value in the database may have 22 decimal places but Tableau only supports up to 15. When
you add that field to the view, you get a precision warning. If you click on the warning, you can
read more details including the number of decimal places that have been truncated in the view.
Remember that the precision of the data displayed in Tableau will always first be dependent on
the data in your database. If the values in your database exceed 15 decimal places, when you
add them to the view, the value is truncated and a precision warning appears.