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Spotfire Ideas Portal
Status Future Consideration
Product Spotfire
Categories Data Management
Created by Guest
Created on Jan 23, 2017

Support for in-memory star-schema relational model without requirement of Insert Columns

Support for 2+ tables in the same visualization.
Note: The current functionality (as of 7.8 and earlier) supports two FACT tables in the same visualization, but not a FACT table and 1+ DIMENSION table(s).
This enhancement request (Original enhancement request = SR 1-EXJAKP / Case # 00827195) is for the support of data tables in a simple Star Schema relational structure in Spotfire Analyst (Professional), without the need for the Insert Columns feature or for pre-joining the data using Information Services or data connection. The main benefit would be to directly link descriptive data from a reference table (also known as a lookup table or a dimension table) without the need to use the Insert Columns feature. The main need is to meet customers' expectations on how to blend data.

The problem with the Insert Columns feature is that it ignores the efficiency of semi-normalized data tables (star schema) and forces the user to de-normalize (or flatten) the data. 

For an explanation of Star Schema, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_schema

Using this diagram (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/fe/Star-schema-example.png/300px-Star-schema-example.png) as an example, the objective would be to have a visualization where, for example, Product_Name could be a Categorical Axis, with Units_Sold as the Value Axis, with only the relationships defined as Fact_Sales.Product_Id:Dim_Product.Id

Examples and tests are in the attached DXP. 
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