Hi all,

I recently ran into a problem when working with reports deployed on a Tableau 9.0 Server, that connect to a PostgreSQL database. All of the reports have between 1 and 5 data sources. After opening some of the reports via the Tableau Server webinterface, an error was raised by the Postgres server: "FATAL: too many connections for role xyz".

Later, I observed the opened connections in PgAdmin (Tools -> Server Status), and noticed that every newly opened report also opens several new connections (mostly 5 connections per report), what leads to a quick exceedance of the connection limit configured in Postgres, which is currently 20 connections per user. When a report is opened again, the previously opened connections for that report seem to be used again.

Does anyone know, why Tableau handles database connections like this? Is it a bug maybe? Why is the connection not closed, after the report has finished loading - or what is the reason to leave the connection open? Is the behavior possibly changeable e.g. by changing the configuration of the Tableau Server or the report's data sources? I'd also be happy with useful links, because my search on google and the tableau onlinehelp wasn't very successful...

Thank you and all the best,

Matthias