Introduction

Often, the data sources required for Tableau visualizations are stored in separate tables or files. A very common example is that of an online order on an e-commerce website. The order information and the customer information are stored separately within the website database. However, when suggestions are provided based on previous purchases, the website might combine the information to show a unified view. This is a very simple example of a data join, which is one of the most common scenarios that can be fulfilled using data preparation techniques. In addition to data joining, there is often a need to perform data manipulation activities such as grouping and adding calculations on the data being used. In this chapter, you will learn about using all such techniques to pull the data into Tableau for effective analysis and visualization.