Extending datasets

Question & Answer
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1

Hi there! What’s the best practice for managing datasets regarding their extensions? The situation is as follows:

  1. I have a view on PostreSQL which QS uses to load the data.
  2. QS load does not automatically discovers a new column, whenever it is added thus I have to play with adding/removing datasets. Consequently, I am also losing the versioning.
  3. This is actually where the fun begins - sometimes when I removed and add new data sources the visualizations break and I have to rebuild from scratch dashboards which his hella annoying.

Thanks in advance,
P

2

Hi @Przemk00

A QuickSight data source contains connection information including the PostgreSQL database, username, password credentials etc. A data set contains information about one or more (joined) tables from the data source (PostgreSQL). In your case, the data set would contain information about the columns obtained from the view.

The metadata including number of columns, data types etc obtained from the database view and updated when a data set is created or the data prep page (Edit data set page) is accessed and saved.

Every time your view is updated to include more fields for example, you can access the data prep page/edit page. Once you confirm the new columns/fields are present, you can ‘Save & Publish’ the data set and the new fields would be available for use.

Using this method, you don’t have to create new data sets every time a column is added to the view, thereby avoiding any data set removal in your analysis, dashboards.
However, incase you have a use case where you are looking to replace a data set in an Analysis, you can use data set ‘replace’ option instead of removing a data set from an analysis and adding a new data set.

Best,
Raj

1 Like
3

@rajjaya It seems to work but then within an analysis, the new field is still missing. Or I am doing something wrong.

4

@rajjaya

can you please check to see if the field is ENABLED (not excluded) at the data prep layer, before you save and publish the dataset?

I hope it helps,
GL

5

Hi @Przemk00

I hope this solved your data management issue.
Let us know if this is not resolved. Thanks for posting your questions on the QuickSight Community Q&A Forum!