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Create Visualizations from SQL Queries

Last update: Tue Jul 25 2023 00:00:00 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)

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The goal for this tutorial is to familiarize you with the terminology used in the SQL Report Builder and give you a solid foundation for creating SQL visualizations.

The SQL Report Builder is a report builder with options: you can run a query for the sole purpose of retrieving a table of data, or you can turn those results into a report. This tutorial explains how to build a visualization from a SQL query.

Terminology

Before you begin this tutorial, refer to the following terminology used in the SQL Report Builder.

  • Series: The column that you want to measure is referred to as a Series in the SQL Report Builder. Common examples are revenue, items sold, and marketing spend. At least one column must be set as a Series to create a visualization.

  • Category: The column you want to use to segment your data is called a Category This is just like the Group By feature in the Visual Report Builder. For example, if you want to segment your customers’ lifetime revenue by their acquisition source, the column that contains acquisition source would be specified as the Category. More than one column can be set as a Category.

NOTE
Dates and timestamps can also be used as Categories. They are just another column of data in your query and must be formatted and ordered as desired in the query itself.
  • Labels: These are applied as x-axis labels. When analyzing data trending over time, the year and month columns are specified as labels. More than one column can be set to be Label.

Step 1: Write the Query

Keep in mind the following:

  • The SQL Report Builder uses Redshift SQL.

  • If you are creating a report with a time series, be sure to ORDER BY the timestamp column(s). This ensures that the timestamps are plotted in the right order on the report.

  • The EXTRACT function is great to use for parsing out the day, week, month, or year of the timestamp. This is useful when the time interval you want to use on the report is daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly.

To get started, open up the SQL Report Builder by clicking Report Builder > SQL Report Builder.

As an example, consider this query that returns the monthly total number of items sold for each product:

    SELECT SUM("qty") AS "Items Sold", "products's name" AS "product name",
    EXTRACT(year from "Order date") AS "year",
    EXTRACT(month from "Order date") AS "month"
    FROM "items"
    WHERE "products's name" LIKE '%Jeans'
    GROUP BY  "products's name", "year","month"
    ORDER BY "year" ASC,"month" ASC
    LIMIT 3500

This query returns this table of results:

Step 2: Create the Visualization

With these results, how do you create the visualization? To get started, click the Chart tab in the Results pane. This displays the Chart settings tab.

When a query is first executed, the report may look inscrutable because all columns in the query are plotted as a series:

For this example, you want this to be a line chart that trends over time. To create it, use these settings:

  • Series: Select the Items sold column as the Series since you want to measure it. After you define a Series column, you’ll see a single line plotted in the report.

  • Category: For this example, you want to view each product as a different line in the report. To do this, you set Product name as the Category.

  • Labels: Use the columns year and month as labels on the x-axis to be able to view Items Sold as trending over time.

NOTE
The query must contain an ORDER BY clause on the labels if they are date/time columns.

Below is a quick look at how you created this visualization, from running the query to setting up the report:

Step 3: Select a Chart Type

This example uses the Line chart type. To use a different chart type, click the icons above the chart options section to change it:

Step 4: Save the Visualization

If you want to use this report again, give the report a name and click Save in the top-right corner.

In the dropdown, select Chart as the Type and then a dashboard to save the report to.

Wrapping Up

Want to take it a step further? Check out the query optimization best practices.

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