How to Make a Pivot Table

Intro

The application’s pivot table visualization can aggregate records from a query result into a new tabular display. It’s similar to PIVOT or GROUP BY statements in SQL. But the visualization is configured with drag-and-drop fields instead of SQL code.

Step 1: Write a query

It should return at least three columns. The source query for a pivot table is usually non-aggregated or "melted", and not necessarily sorted the way we want.

We will use the pivot table to do this without SQL.

Step 2: Add a Pivot Table visualization

Click Add Visualization and choose Pivot Table as the visualization type. The visualization preview on the right will update to show a pivot table.

All the field aliases from your query result become available at the top of the pivot control surface. You can drag these to the row side or the column side. You can also nest them.

Here is a simple example using the data from the above query:

Pivot table performance can degrade if your query result is too big. The exact size threshold will depend on the computer and browser from which you access the application. But in general, performance is best below 50,000 fields. That could mean 10,000 records with 5 fields each. Or 1,000 records with 50 fields each.

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