Tableau Catalog discovers and indexes all of the content on your Tableau Cloud site or Tableau Server, including workbooks, data sources, sheets, metrics, and flows. (The legacy Metrics feature was retired in February 2024 for Tableau Cloud and in Tableau Server version 2024.2. For more information, see Create and Troubleshoot Metrics (Retired).) Indexing is used to gather information about the content, or metadata, about the schema and lineage of the content. Then from the metadata, Catalog identifies all of the databases, files, and tables used by the content on your Tableau Cloud site or Tableau Server.
Catalog is available with the Data Management license. For more information, see About Data Management.
In addition to Catalog, metadata about your content can also be accessed from both the Tableau Metadata API and the Tableau REST API using Metadata Methods.
Catalog on Tableau Cloud
Catalog is automatically enabled if your Tableau Cloud site has Data Management.
If you have Tableau Cloud Standard and upgrade to an edition that includes Data Management, a site admin must turn on Catalog once:
- Sign in to Tableau Cloud using your admin credentials.
- From the left navigation pane, click Settings.
- On the General tab, under Tableau Catalog, select the Turn on Tableau Catalog check box.
When your Tableau Cloud site has Data Management, the content that exists on your Tableau Cloud site is indexed. The time it takes to index the content depends on the amount of content you have. After the content is initially indexed, Catalog monitors newly published content and other changes to assets and continues to index in the background.
If your site is downgraded to Standard, Catalog is turned off.
Troubleshoot Catalog
You or your users might encounter one of the following issues when using Catalog.
Timeout limit and node limit exceeded messages
To ensure that Catalog tasks that have to return a large number of results don’t take up all system resources, Catalog implements both timeout and node limits.
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Timeout limit
When tasks in Catalog reach the timeout limit, you and your users see the following message:
“Showing partial results, Request time limit exceeded. Try again later.” or TIME_LIMIT_EXCEEDED
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Node limit
When tasks in Catalog reach the node limit, you and your users see the following message:
NODE_LIMIT_EXCEEDED