Tableau Report (Glossary or Lineage) Call Back to the MM Application

Creating a Glossary report in Tableau as a URL Call Back to the MM Application

In order to produce a glossary of the fields in the report and allow you to further analyze the metadata in a report, the best way would be to allow Tableau to make a call back to Talend Data Catalog . In this case, there is a URL based result that produces a generic glossary report.

The glossary report is a simple report of all elements and sub reports contained in a report and then all terms linked to those elements and sub reports and any terms linked to the report as a whole. It is designed to be invoked from a URL which can be called from within Tableau itself, thus allowing one to customize the reports themselves to provide the terms and definitions associated with the report.

Steps

1. Open the workbook in Tableau for which you wish to add a glossary.
2. Click Edit Workbook.
3. Click New Dashboard.
4. Name the dashboard a meaningful name, like “Glossary”.
5. Drag the Web Page object into the body of the dashboard.
6. Paste the call back URL (pointing back to Talend Data Catalog ) for the specific workbook. This is based upon the information defined in the MetadataExplorer.xml file for the environment (call back reference).
7. Click OK.
8. Click Publish.

Example

Open the workbook in Tableau

and click Edit Workbook.

Click New Dashboard.

Name the dashboard a meaningful name, like “Glossary”. Drag the Web Page object into the body of the dashboard and paste the call back URL (pointing back to Talend Data Catalog ) for the specific workbook.

Click OK and then Publish.

Setting up the MM Application to receive URL Call Back from the Tableau Server

Due to the Tableau Web Application Server implementation and security considerations, there are a few requirements on the Talend Data Catalog setup

Tomcat Server SSL Configuration (HTTPS)

For security reasons, the Tableau Server can only call an HTTPS (SSL based URL). Therefore, SSL must be configured on the Talend Data Catalog server. More details may be found in the deployment guide. As a side note, you cannot use a self-signed certificate to establish connectivity as Tableau does not trust self-signed certificates due to their security policies.

Tomcat Server Security Policy for Frame Ancestry

The Tableau server intentionally uses the X-Frame-Options header to prevent cross-origin framing (embedded in <iframe>) as explained in this article:
‎https://kb.tableau.com/articles/issue/error-url-refused-to-connect-occurs-in-the-web-page-objects-after-publishing

Consequently, the security policy of the Talend Data Catalog server Tomcat Server must be configured accordingly for frame ancestors, by editing the file:

$MM/tomcat/conf/web.xml

Either by setting the frame ancestor to any as follows:

frame-ancestors 'self' *;

or better by limiting it to the top domain as follows:

frame-ancestors 'self' *.MyCompany.com;

Tomcat Server Context for Cross Site Cookies

The Tableau server is implemented in such a way that it does a cross site request (which is not ideal from the security perspective), but somewhat mitigated by requiring HTTPS.

Consequently, the context of the Talend Data Catalog server Tomcat Server must be configured accordingly for same site cookies by editing the file:

$MM/tomcat/conf/MetaIntegration/localhost/context.xml.default

switching the sameSiteCookies from lax to none to allow the web browser to store the cross site cookie:

<CookieProcessor sameSiteCookies="none" />