Explore Data
A grasp of these concepts will help you understand this documentation better:
Introduction
Exploring data from a dataset is the starting point toward building a dashboard. Using datasets, users can slice and dice your data with a familiar drag-and-drop interface.
Behind the scenes, Holistics generates queries from user's interactions, and then runs them against the database. When the result set is returned from the database, Holistics combines it with the visualization settings to render the result to your browser.
In the following sections, we will walk through some basic concepts to get started with data exploration.
Dimensions & Measures
When opening a dataset, user is presented with a list of fields:
- Dimensions are non-aggregated data fields displayed in black. Dimensions can be of any data type.
- Measures are aggregated data fields (counting, summing, averaging, etc.). Measures always return a numerical result and are displayed in blue along with a sigma icon.
Filtering Data
To filter your data while exploring, drag a field into the Conditions area, select a comparison operator, and specify the value to apply.
Different field types will have different sets of operators, for example, conditions using a Date field will have operators that are specific for date comparison:
For more on basic filtering operations in Holistics, visit the Filters documentation page
You can also check out the following for more advanced filter features:
Limiting data
Sometimes, to speed up the process of exploring data, you only want to see a subset of your complete results from your query. You can do this in Holistics by using our Row Limit feature:
Without a set row limit, Holistics supports up to 1,000,000 rows for Data Exploration / Report Creation and 100,000 rows for Data Modeling Preview. When you apply a row limit, Holistics displays the specified number of rows, notifying you of incomplete results.
- The Row Limit is directly applied on your query.
- Our sort order is important in these situations: Holistics will first applies the limit, and then applies the sort. For more detail, please refer to the Sorting data page.
Show Items with No Data
When exploring two models with relationships, it is possible that a value in one model may not exist in another model.
For example, not all customers will have at least one order, so some users will not have associated records in the orders table. By default, Holistics will not display these records:
To include items with no data, you can toggle on the option Show rows with no data under STYLE > Others in our Visualization Settings. Please refer to the video below:
You might also want to check out how to show rows with no data when applying filter.
Explore with SQL
SQL Editor is only available to analysts role.
Beside the Dataset, Holistics also has the SQL Editor as another way to explore your data. This tool is suitable for running simple SQL queries to do ad-hoc analysis, to understand the shape of your data, or to prototype a data model setup.
Similar to the Dataset UI, it also has the visualization panel in case you want to visualize your query results:
The editor can be accessed from the top Navigation Bar:
Running non-select SQL queries
By default, Holistics only allows SELECT statements to run against your database. However, you can still run non-SELECT statements (like INSERT, UPDATE, DROP, CREATE, GRANT...) in the SQL Editor by toggling on Non-select query option:
If this is not toggled on, the non-SELECT query will be invalidated by Holistics.
This functionality is available to all account types that has access to Query Editor (i.e Admin & Analyst).
Non-select statements may affect your database directly and cause irreversible changes. Please take great care when using this functionality.