Tableau · Quick Reference

Lesson 11 — Data Blending & Relationships Cheat Sheet

Tableau

In one line: Tableau offers three distinct ways to combine data from multiple tables or sources. Understanding when to use each is one of the most important skills at the advanced level.

Key Ideas

1Joins vs. Relationships vs. Data Blending. Tableau offers three distinct ways to combine data from multiple tables or sources. Understanding when to use each is one of the most important skills at the advanced ...

2Tableau Relationships — The New Data Model. Introduced in Tableau 2020.2, Relationships are now the recommended way to combine tables in Tableau. Unlike traditional SQL joins (which merge tables into a flat row ...

3Data Blending — Combining Different Source Types. Data Blending is Tableau's method for combining data from fundamentally different source types in the same view — for example, sales data from SQL Server and marketing...

4Cross-Database Joins. Cross-database joins let you join tables from different data sources at the row level — like a SQL JOIN but across different database engines. For example, join a Sale...

5Building a Multi-Source Analytics System. Practical exercise: you have three data sources that need to be combined — sales data in MySQL, marketing spend in Excel, and customer survey scores in Google Sheets. ...