Overlap analysis is designed to make it safer to combine information in multiple tables into an analytic data set. It does this by providing counts of overlapping key fields amongst pairs of tables. For example, if an analytic data set is being built to describe customers, it is useful to know whether the customer, account and transaction tables that provide information about customers actually refer to the same customers.
Given a column name and a list of table names, the Overlap analysis determines the number of instances of that column which each pair-wise combination of tables has in common. The same may also be performed for multiple columns taken together.
The Overlap analysis is parameterized by specifying the table and column(s) to analyze, options unique to the Overlap analysis, as well as specifying the desired results and SQL or Expert Options.