After working with Tableau Prep for a while, I was greeted with a “you’ve got an update waiting” message this morning. Being a sucker for updates and after rounding up my “to-do” list I decided to install the update and get everything ready again.
I first noticed an issue when the splash screen took a while longer than usual but thinking nothing of it, I went to work as usual.
This, however, is when the problems started: small changes to workflows took ages to load, Prep seemed unresponsive and previewing data took so long that I could get a coffee refill before executing the next step.
Concerned for my general health with all the added caffeine I started asking around for known issues with prep until someone pointed me towards an older KB-article published by Tableau about the EXACT issue (https://community.tableau.com/external-link.jspa?url=https%3A%2F%2Fkb.tableau.com%2Farticles%2Fissue%2FTableau-Prep-Builder-Performs-Slowly-or-Stops-Responding-on-Mac-OS). As my luck would have it: the KB-article was no longer available and nowhere to be found.
After stretching my legs and doing some warmups, I summoned all of my google-fu and found the answer, hidden in the dark corners of the Tableau community boards which I’m posting here for posterity:
Resolution
- Run the following command in terminal to check the current hostname, and note it down in case you want to reverse the change:
hostname - Run the following command to change the hostname to “localhost”: sudo scutil –set HostName “localhost”
- Restart Tableau Prep Builder and verify that the issue no longer occurs.
Cause
Hostnames other than “localhost” can cause performance issues for some software, including Tableau Prep Builder.
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