INTEGRATING TABLEAU, SQL, AND VISUALIZATION FOR DASHBOARD-DRIVEN DECISION SUPPORT: A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW

Abstract

This systematic review investigates the performance, optimization, and governance practices of business intelligence (BI) systems with a focus on SQL-driven dashboards, streaming pipelines, cloud scalability, and organizational integration. Following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines, 142 studies published between 2005 and 2024 were systematically identified, screened, and synthesized. The review highlights several key findings. First, SQL continues to serve as the foundational language in BI, maintaining its dominance through adaptability across distributed and hybrid environments. Second, dashboards have evolved beyond their original descriptive function, now acting as governance instruments that embed compliance, accountability, and transparency into organizational workflows. Third, sectoral and regional variations demonstrate that BI adoption and optimization are shaped by contextual factors, with financial and healthcare sectors prioritizing compliance and risk management, while retail and e-commerce emphasize customer analytics and speed. Fourth, performance optimization remains a critical concern, with techniques such as query pushdown, incremental refresh, caching, and streaming pipelines shown to reduce latency and improve scalability in real-time analytics. Fifth, monitoring, testing, and maintainability practices are increasingly emphasized, aligning BI with DevOps principles and continuous integration frameworks. Additionally, cloud and hybrid scalability emerge as both technical and economic challenges, requiring elastic infrastructures balanced against cost and governance demands. Finally, the review underscores the need for conceptual integration of technical, organizational, and governance dimensions, as BI success depends on harmonizing these three axes. Collectively, the findings confirm earlier scholarship while extending it with new empirical and conceptual insights, illustrating that BI has matured into a strategic infrastructure supporting decision-making, regulatory compliance, and organizational resilience. This review provides actionable recommendations for practitioners and highlights research gaps that call for deeper exploration of cross-sectoral comparisons, governance integration models, and economic trade-offs in BI scalability.