We will cover the following topics in this chapter:
Connecting to text files
Connecting to Excel files
Connecting to Access databases
Connecting to a SQL Server
Pasting from a clipboard
Connecting to other databases
Connecting to Windows Azure Marketplace
Understanding dimensions and measures
Changing data types
Applying filters
Merging multiple data sources
Introduction
This chapter will cover the basics to get Tableau connected with various data sources, such as text files, Excel/Access files, SQL Server, ODBC sources, and the clipboard. We will cover simplistic versions of data files, where data is clean and ready-to-use. This chapter also covers how to apply filters to reduce the available data for analysis as well as merging two different data sources.