In a nutshell, data blending allows you to merge multiple, disparate data sources into a single view. Understanding the four following points will give you a basic grasp on data blending.
- Data blending is typically used to merge data from multiple data sources. Although as of Tableau 10, joining is possible between multiple data sources, there are still cases when data blending is the only possible option to merge data from two or more sources. In the following sections, we will see a pants and shirts example that demonstrates such a case.
- Data blending requires a shared dimension. A date dimension is often a good candidate for blending multiple data sources.
- Data blending aggregates and then matches. Joining matches and then aggregates. This point will be covered in detail in a later section.
- Data blending does not enable dimensions from a secondary...
