Data can be organized in a specific order where each value is either above or below in relation to the other values. Usually in this hierarchical structure, the most general value is at the top and the most detailed one is at the bottom.

Hierarchical structures are often visualized in the form of tree diagrams, treemaps, or bar charts. Typically, product categories and the products therein, or geographical data like continent/country/city, et cetera, are suitable for using hierarchies.

In Spotfire, you can structure your data hierarchically by visualizing more than one column on an axis. In this way, you get a better overview of your data, can analyze it in more detail, and get better insights.

In the example below, three columns are selected on the category axis. The data becomes organized hierarchically with three different levels of detail. The bar chart automatically displays a bar for each combination in the hierarchy -- in this case the sales of each type of fruit and each type of vegetables per year.

You can change the hierarchy order, if you prefer to see the bars in another way. Drag the Category axis selector and drop it to the left of the Year axis selector.

This causes the bar chart to change the order of the bars. As you can see below, the bars concerning fruit sales are now placed next to each other. Note how the hierarchy displayed in the labels below the bar chart corresponds to the order of the axis selectors.

In Spotfire there are several ways to create and work with hierarchies.

By adding more than one column to a visualization axis you can create a temporary hierarchy. You can edit this hierarchy any time by switching the order of the columns, as shown in the example above, or by adding or removing columns.

If you want to keep a certain hierarchy, that is, if you want the columns and their order to be fixed, and reuse it, you can define the hierarchy. You can define a hierarchy either from a visualization axis, from the Add hierarchy dialog or from a time-series column.

A defined hierarchy is shown in the Data in analysis flyout as a column. The hierarchy can then be used in any visualization just like a column. It is also associated with a hierarchy filter, which consists of an expandable tree view where categories at the different levels are represented by check boxes.

In addition, a hierarchy selected on an axis is supplemented with a slider, by which you can easily switch between the various hierarchy levels. The visualization will immediately adjust to the current level of detail.

Time data is by nature structured hierarchically. For more information about hierarchies with time-series data and how to work with them, see Defining a hierarchy from a time-series column and Additional operations with time hierarchies.