Use Relationships for Multi-table Data Analysis

Tables that you drag into this canvas use relationships. Relationships are a flexible way to combine data for multi-table analysis in Tableau.

Think of a relationship as a contract between two tables. When you are building a viz with fields from these tables, Tableau brings in data from these tables using that contract to build a query with the appropriate joins.

We recommend using relationships as your first approach to combining your data because it makes data preparation and analysis easier and more intuitive. Use joins only when you absolutely need to(Link opens in a new window). Learn more about the basics of creating relationships in this 5-minute video.

Note: The interface for editing relationships shown in this video differs slightly from the current release but has the same functionality.

Learn more about how relationships work in these Tableau blog posts:

Also see video podcasts on relationships from Action Analytics(Link opens in a new window), such as Why did Tableau Invent Relationships?(Link opens in a new window) Click "Video Podcast" in the Library(Link opens in a new window) to see more.

In Tableau version 2024.2 and later, the Tableau data model supports multi-fact analysis and shared dimensions through multi-fact relationships. For more information, see About Multi-fact Relationship Data Models(Link opens in a new window), When to Use a Multi-fact Relationship Model(Link opens in a new window), and Build a Multi-fact Relationship Data Model(Link opens in a new window).

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