Chapter 5. Source Data is Never Enough

Any analysis, no matter how clever or imaginative, is only as good as the underlying data. Chapter 1, Show Me the Data, got you started with data; this chapter will take you through some more advanced concepts and techniques. It will show you how to use Spotfire's data tools to transform your source data, when necessary, into a form that is more suitable for your analysis needs.

It's always good practice to do as much heavy lifting as possible in source systems and data warehouses before you import data into a front-end analysis tool such as Spotfire. If you need to combine data from multiple tables, ask a database administrator or modeler to create a view in the database and use that view as your data source. If you need to combine data from multiple data sources, ask an extract transform load (ETL) developer to create the necessary integration scripts and stage the data you need in a form convenient for your analysis needs. What...