Relationships

Although this chapter will primarily focus on joins, blends, and the manipulation of data structures, let’s begin with an introduction to relationships: a new functionality available since Tableau 2020.2, and one that the Tableau community has been waiting a long time for. It is the new default option in the data canvas; therefore, we will first investigate relationships, which belong to the logical layer of the data model, before diving deeper into the join and union functionalities that operate on the physical layer.

To read all about the physical and logical layers of Tableau’s data model, visit the Tableau help pages: https://help.tableau.com/current/online/en-us/datasource_datamodel.htm.

For now, you can think of the logical layer as being able to count smarter. Imagine a customer table with unique customer names and an order table with hundreds of recorded orders. In a logical layer, a customer name with multiple orders (thus multiple...