Tableau connects to data stored in a wide variety of files and databases. This includes flat files, such as Excel and text files; relational databases, such as SQL Server and Oracle; cloud-based data sources, such as Google Analytics and Amazon Redshift; and OLAP data sources, such as Microsoft Analysis Services. With very few exceptions, the process of building visualizations and performing analysis will be the same no matter what data source you use. We'll cover the details of connecting to different data sources in Chapter 2, Working with Data in Tableau.
For now, we'll connect to a text file, specifically, a comma-separated values file (.csv). The data itself is a variation of the sample data provided with Tableau for ...
