Introduction
Being able to join two or more datasets together is a really powerful skill to have as a data practitioner. As datasets grow in size and/or complexity, the need to break them apart becomes necessary, which in turn requires joining.
In general terms, joining data together is synonymous with merging or combining data together
Spreadsheet
We'll introduce the VLOOKUP function in Google Sheets, which is one of the most widely used features in spreadsheet software.
Database and SQL
The SQL operators introduced in this lesson include:
- INNER JOIN
- LEFT JOIN
BI Software
Joining datasets is done in the back-end of a BI Software tool, so that end-users don't have to do it themselves. We'll show how this is done with Looker's LookML, and also introduce the Merge Results feature.