What is the purpose of data blending in Tableau?

Data blending in Tableau is specifically designed to combine data from different data sources, enabling users to conduct comparative analysis across these varied datasets. This is particularly useful when you have separate databases or systems that contain relevant information, and you want to analyze them together without needing to merge them into a single database beforehand.

The process allows for the blending of data with a common field, which can facilitate deeper insights and comparisons. For example, if you have sales data from one source and marketing data from another, data blending allows you to analyze how marketing efforts are impacting sales, providing a holistic view of your business performance.

While cleaning and organizing data is crucial, that function is more aligned with data preparation rather than blending. Similarly, while performance is essential for data queries, data blending focuses on creating a unified analytical view from disparate sources, rather than directly increasing performance. Lastly, transforming raw data into summary reports typically involves aggregation and summarization steps, which again differ from the blending approach that looks at relationships between data from different origins.