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But surely you still have to enter all that perculiar SQL code? Or does Tableau have a translation matrix that just 'makes it so'? Quite new to all this.

Yeah it has a translation matrix :). No coding whatsoever. Just connect to the Microsoft sql server as per the tutorial on the steemSQL website. Then select which table you want to look at and voila! If you’re struggling, I can do a 2 minute video to show you tomorrow!
HOWEVER, it is a huge database and it took around 3 minutes per change in query for me when my CPU (7700k) was calculating stuff.

Hey that sounds great, I'll have to get onto it... video would be cool. Just bloody work means I am very limited time wise! And I have a budget laptop on which I run tableau so that might not be the best either...