We have good news!
BI Software like Looker makes it very easy to group and pivot data. Inherently, BI Software groups data via its dimensions to aggregate a measure.
For example, if we click on the Country dimension and # of Unique Users measure in our Getting Started: Users dataset we're actually doing a SQL GROUP BY behind-the-scenes:
Which gives us the following output:
This is a great example of the true power and value BI Software can bring to an organization. Not everyone is able to understand the nuances of a dataset and/or know how to write SQL. However, with the proper build-out of dimensions and measures, anyone can click a few buttons and start pulling data from a database.
And to pivot data in Looker, we'll use the Pivot feature. Let's use the same example we introduced in the Building a Pivot Table in Google Sheets lesson:
| Item | Description | Example (see screenshot below) |
| Row | The field you want to see as rows | Place each "Country" value in a row |
| Column | The field you want to see as columns | Place each "Acquisition Source" value as a column |
| Value | The field you want to aggregate | Aggregate for the Count of Unique Users |
| Filter | The data you want to exclude | Exclude any User that's deleted their account |
In just a few clicks we can setup Looker to do exactly what's outlined above (notice the Acquisition Source field has the Pivot button selected, thus turning our values into fields/columns):
