Unable To Use A Date Dimension In Incremental Refresh For A Flow Input

KNOWLEDGE BASE

Unable To Use A Date Dimension In Incremental Refresh For A Flow Input

Published: 13 Sep 2020
Last Modified Date: 08 Jul 2022

Issue

Date field is recognized as string and unable to use it for incremental refresh for a flow input

Environment

Tableau Prep 2020.2.1 and later

Resolution

Workaround 1

Make sure that the date field in the original data source is configured to have date as a Data type

Workaround 2

Use Custom SQL: Cast the data type as Date for the string recognized column

Example:

SELECT "SuperStore_Orders"."Order ID" AS "Order_ID",
CAST("SuperStore_Orders"."Order Date" as date) AS "Order_Date" from "_SYS_BIC"."SuperStore_Orders" "SuperStore_Orders"

Cause

In the DB, Fields having values like 20200807 are interpreted as a String instead of date and the requirement for incremental refresh to be enabled is field must be assigned a data type of Number (whole), Date, or Date & Time