[dwmintz]

It's worth distinguishing between the tools that leave the data in your data warehouse (Caravel, Periscope, Mode, Looker (where I work)), and those that have their own data stores (Good Data, Qlikview, etc.) Tableau can connect directly to your datastore, but it's happier if it can operate on data that's stored locally in-memory.

Anyway, the ones where bring your own database can scale as far as the database can bring you.

[caravel]

Note that Tableau doesn't play well with Presto which Airbnb uses extensively. No possibility of using the "live mode"

[dwmintz]

Not arguing that Airbnb should use Looker, but fwiw, Looker (where I work) does in fact connect to Presto fine.