Filtering data
Often, you will want to filter data in Tableau in order to perform an analysis on a subset of data, narrow your focus, or drill into details. Tableau offers multiple ways to filter data.
While you may apply any number of filters to any given view, if you want to limit the scope of all your analysis to a subset of data, you can filter the data at the source using one of the following techniques:
- Data source filters are applied before all other filters and are useful when you want to limit your analysis to a subset of data.
- Extract filters limit the data that is stored in an extract (
.tde
or.hyper
). Data source filters are often converted into extract filters if they are present when you extract the data. - Custom SQL filters can be accomplished using a live connection with custom SQL, which has a Tableau parameter in the
WHERE
clause. We’ll examine parameters in Chapter 4, Starting an Adventure with Calculations and Parameters.