Tableau Desktop Specialist Practice Exam 2025 – 400 Free Practice Questions to Pass the Exam

The default connection type in Tableau is Live. When a user first connects to a data source, Tableau automatically establishes a live connection. This type of connection allows Tableau to directly query the data in the database or data source in real-time, enabling the most up-to-date information to be displayed in the visualizations.

Using a live connection means that any changes made in the data source immediately reflect in Tableau without needing to refresh the data manually. This is particularly important for dynamic datasets that change frequently, allowing users to analyze data as it evolves.

Other connection types like Extract involve creating a snapshot of the data at a specific point in time, which can be beneficial for performance and when offline access is needed but are not the default. Similarly, Snapshot and Static are not standard connection options in Tableau, contributing to the clarity that Live is the primary method for maintaining a current data visualization workflow.