MetricFlow with Tableau (and is Semantic Layer necessary)

Has anyone used the MetricFlow successfully yet? I know it’s newer to dbt, and I haven’t been able to find a lot of successful implementation stories online.

  • I cannot tell from the documentation is the Semantic Layer is necessary to use MetricFlow. It doesn’t seem to be a requirement, but I cannot see how it can be used in practice without also having the Semantic layer. Can anyone confirm or reject the need of having the Semantic Layer to make MetricFlow work?

  • Has anyone set up a BI tool to MetricFlow, and what has your experience looked like? If the metrics are being queried in dbt and pushed to a data warehouse, how do you use these metrics within the BI tool? Is this only done through an API connection?

Thanks!