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Excluding columns/fields from an extract

Posted April 23rd, 2008 by A.Loomis

Hi
In working with both Oracle and mySQL databases, Tableau will error out on extracts and identify columns or fields of data that is throwing the error. Is there a way to exclude the error causing fields so that I can create an extract?

To use a specific example, in my mySQL db I have an overly long data field named "description." This field causes the extract to fail, with this error message:

Firebird database error 335544569: Dynamic SQL Error
-SQL error code = -204
-Data type unknown
-Implementation limit exceeded
-COLUMN description
Unable to create local query context

I don't need this field for my reports, and would like to just exclude it so that I can work with extracts.

Thanks in advance,
Angela

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Comments

On May 26th, 2008 Debbie (not verified) said:

Hi Angela,

Have you had any luck excluding the field htat is causing your error. I have the same type of problem where a field in my SQL database that contains an image cannot be converted.

Debbie

On June 6th, 2008 Erin Easter said:

Hi,

I don't think there is an easy way to exclude a column from an extract in the way you suggest. However, you could try creating a new connection to the database using custom SQL that excludes the unnecessary columns. What I mean is when you connect to data, instead of choosing one or more tables to connect to you can choose to type in a custom SQL query. Tableau will connect to the results of that query. After you are connected you can extract the data.
I hope this helps.

On June 24th, 2008 Ross Bunker said:

One trick is that once you finish creating a connection, you can go back in via select Data->Connection->Edit...
Then click on the 'custom sql' button. This will copy in the SELECT statement for the table, and you can edit it to omit columns.

Note that in Tableau 4.0 (entering beta now...) if you hide columns they will not be extracted.