Data blending
In a nutshell, data blending allows you to merge multiple, disparate data sources in a single view. Understanding the four following points will give you a basic grasp of 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 where data blending is the only possible option to merge data from two or more sources. The following Pants & Shirts example 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 the following section
- Data blending does not enable dimensions from a secondary data source:
- Attempting to use dimensions from a secondary data source will result in a * or null in the view. There is an exception to this rule, which we...
