Datasets

Datasets are defined on the connections to your data, and provide access to the specific tables in the data store. In Arcadia Enterprise, visualizations are built from datasets.

Other than providing access to data, datasets enhance data access and use in many ways, including (but not limited to):

• Table joins allow you to supplement the primary data with information from various other data sources. See Data Model: Joins.
• Derived fields/attributes support flexible expressions, both for dimensions and for aggregates. See Column Definitions.
• Hiding fields enables you to eliminate the fields that are unnecessary to the business use case, or to obscure sensitive data without affecting the base tables. See Hiding Columns.
• Changing data types of the field attributes often helps you to deal with date types, or to ensure that numeric codes (like event ids), are processed correctly. See Changing Column Type.
• Changing the default aggregation of fields at dataset level prevents common mistakes when building visuals. See Changing Field Aggregation.
• Providing user-friendly names for native columns or derived attributes often makes the visuals more accessible, and saves some of the effort of applying aliases to each field of the visual. See Automatically Renaming Dataset Fields and Custom Renaming Fields.