You can think of the source as the slice of data that will be used in a visualization. Your Pokeit database contains dozens of tables with hundreds of fields. By setting a source, you’re deciding what part of your database you actually want to look at.
A source has three different aspects: package, fields and filters. Let’s take a look at each one.
Package
By selecting a package you’re deciding on the type of data you want to build your visualization out of. Are you interested in hands, tournaments or maybe individual actions within a hand? The available packages are:
| Hands | A record for each player in each hand. Contains statistics broken down by street |
| Tournaments | A record for each player in each tournament. Tournament summaries are often required to provide this information. See the article Supported Sites & Games for details |
| Actions | A record for each action in each hand. Includes antes and discards |
| Versus | A record for each opposing player seen by each player in each hand. Used for Chord diagrams |
Under the hood, a package is a collection of database tables linked together. Each table contains fields describing individual attributes of each hand, tournament or action. We’ll explore how these fields can be displayed in your visualization or filtered on later in this article.
Fields
Once you choose a package, you can then select which fields and formulas you want to include in your source (Formulas are special combinations of multiple fields). Only fields/formulas available in your package can be chosen here.
So for example if your package is Tournaments, you won’t be able to select a field like “Holecards” here because that’s a property of each hand.
Selecting fields here doesn’t add the field to your visualization, it simply makes those fields available to be chosen in your presentation. You can, of course, choose every field. The only downside is you’ll have to scroll through them all later when you pick fields for your visualization.
Filters
Applying one or more filters to your source lets you remove situations or subsets from your results that aren't important to your analysis. Almost all sources include at least one filter. The most common are the filters dictating if the source should show hero or villain data. Other pre-built filters allow you to view only the most recent session, table or hand.
Since adjusting filters is such a common way of interacting with your data, we include several shortcuts to this section when you have a visualization loaded. You can view which filters you have loaded by clicking the filter button in the toolbar or by clicking the filters button in the top right corner of the settings panel.
One thing you may notice is the Filter Workspace section is only visible when you have a visualization loaded. If you open a visualization or source in the Asset Manager, this section is missing. This is because the Filter Workspace is shared across all loaded visualizations and isn’t part of any source. If you save the Filter Workspace, you’ll get the option to add it to your source, but it isn’t required.