Summary
In this chapter, we have looked at connecting to different data sources. First, we investigated connecting to local and network files and learned the principles for connecting to databases with ODBC connections. We also investigated enriching our internal data sources with public and authenticated APIs. Finally, we saw how to use the Download tool to access the data resources and download them to Alteryx.
Once we had the data source, we performed some initial data cleansing so that our dataset could be used quickly. We can deliver on the Improve Cycle Times principle by getting the initial dataset to our customers so that they can validate what we have acquired.
The next chapter will investigate how we can iterate over the dataset to improve it for better use and transform it into an excellent dataset for our requirements.
