Chapter 4. Connecting to Data and Simple Transformations
The first thing you usually do when opening Tableau is to connect to a dataset. You already had a glimpse of a data connection in the previous chapter, when we used an Excel file. In this chapter, we'll cover the most important options that Tableau offers when connecting to data, along with the following:
- Data connections
- Join data easily
- Union your data
- Simple transformations
To harmonize all the different terms used between the various data providers, we'll use the following terms through the chapter:
- A dataset represents any source of data. It is where your data is located. It could be an Excel file, a database on a server, or a file on the cloud. This is what you want to connect to Tableau.
- Tables represent, no matter the connection, a sheet in Excel or a table in a database.
- Data Source represents the result of your connection after all the transformations.
Let's start with some examples of data connections.
