The Tableau paradigm
The unique and exciting experience of working with data in Tableau is a result of VizQL (Visual Query Language).
VizQL was developed as a Stanford University research project, focusing on the natural ways that humans visually perceive the world and how that could be applied to data visualization. We naturally perceive differences in size, shape, spatial location, and color. VizQL allows Tableau to translate your actions, as you drag and drop fields of data in a visual environment, into a query language that defines how the data encodes those visual elements. You will never need to read, write, or debug VizQL. As you drag and drop fields onto various shelves defining size, color, shape, and spatial location, Tableau will generate the VizQL behind the scenes. This allows you to focus on visualizing data, not writing code!
One of the benefits of VizQL is that it provides a common way of describing how the arrangement of various fields in a view defines a...