POWER BI
Power BI stands for power business intelligence which is a collection of software services, tools and connectors. Power BI is a business analytics platform that helps transform data into actionable insights.
Uses of Power BI in data analytics and business intelligence
Data visualization and reporting
Power bi is used for communicating findings visually to stakeholders through reports and dashboards representing data.Data integration
Power Bi helps in merging different sector datasets and coming to a conclusion. E.g. product data and market data.Collaboration
Power Bi facilitates collaboration by providing a centralized platform for teams to build, share, and work on data insights securely. This is particularly enabled through role-based access control.Data transformation
Power bi's query editor enables users to clean, shape and combine data from various sources such as excel, PostgreSQL and web.
Companies connects Power Bi to databases like SQL, PostgreSQL which can take real time tracking of Key Performance Indicators as the data changes. Artificial Intelligence and machine learning is also embedded to make business predictions based on data store in the connected databases. Databases such relational or not relational, allow large volume of data compared to excel sheet. Through functions such as triggers and events it's easy to update database for correct storage of data.
Connecting Power BI to a local PostgreSQL Database.
1 open the power BI desktop and click on get data on the tool bar.
2 click on more option and select databases.
3 select PostgreSQL database then click connect.
4 Enter your PostgreSQL details, select import then click OK.
5 Enter your credentials and click connect.
7 You have successfully connect to your local PostgreSQL database, choose your table of interest and load them for use.
The tables shown are loaded and Power Bi automatically finds foreign key to then and joins then creating schema through the relationships.
Connecting Power BI to cloud database e.g. aiven PostgreSQL
Just like the above steps ,
1 open the power BI desktop.
2 click on get data on the tool bar.
3 click on more option and select databases.
4 select PostgreSQL database then click connect.
5 Go to aiven and download the CA certificate.
The SSL certificate from aiven, is a trusted and encrypted for security purposes. Ensuring that only the computer having the certificate can connect to the cloud database.
Why do you need SQL skills for power BI analyst?
As we have seen above, power bi can be connected to different databases be it locally or in a cloud. It is essential for an analyst to have knowledge of SQL to apply them in data manipulation. Database performance by indexing and query optimization is important to achieve normalization in a vast fast changing environment.
SQl has variety of built-in functions that can be uses to retrieve, filter data and perform aggregation. We have conditional evaluation using WHERE to return dataset satisfying the given condition e.g.
SELECT first_name WHERE first_name like '%T'
SQL's window function offers an easy way in ranking rows, partitioning ranking and even grouping different entities. One of the powerful functions are GROUP BY and HAVING. Some of the common aggregate functions include count, sum, max, min etc
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