POWER BI EXPLAINED
Microsoft Power BI is a business intelligence platform that provides nontechnical business users with tools for Aggregating, analyzing, visualizing and sharing data. Power BI's user interface is fairly intuitive for users familiar with Excel and its deep integration with other Microsoft products makes it a very versatile self-service tool that requires little upfront training
Here, are the most prominent reasons for using Power BI tool:
• Pre-built dashboards and reports for SaaS Solutions
• Power BI allows real-time dashboard updates.
• Offers Secure and reliable connection to your data sources in the cloud or on-premises
• Power BI offers Quick deployment, hybrid configuration, and secure environment.
• Allows data exploration using natural language query
• Offers feature for dashboard visualization regularly updated with the community.
TOOLS IN POWER BI
- Author
- Publish
- Consume
POWER BI DESKTOP (AUTHOR)
Power BI desktop is the primary authoring and publishing tool for Power BI. Developers and power users use it to create brand new models and reports from scratch.
Power BI (engine) and it needs fuel which is data
It runs on two engines which are:
• The Query Editor
• Model Relationships + DAX
o You need to separate between the data tables and the lookup tables
oThe lookup tables explains (who, what, where, when, how) and the data tables contains millions of data e.g. (sales data for the year).
DAX (Data analysis Expressions)
• Never use implicit measures.
• Use explicit measures
o Three Key Reasons why explicit measures can be used
- Control
- Reuse
- Connected Reports
DAX functions
In Power BI, you can use different function types to analyze data, and create new columns and measures. It includes functions from different categories such as −
• Aggregate
• Text
• Date
• Logical
• Counting
• Information
Visualization
o A visual display of information to achieve one or more objective. It offers a single-screen display of information. It alerts users on issues or problems Operational, Performance, Personal, etc.
The Power BI product is made up of a number of apps, each with their own features and uses. These include:
• Power Query: a data connection tool that lets you transform, combine, and enhance data from several sources
• Power Pivot: a data modeling tool for creating data models
• Power View: a data visualization tool that generates interactive charts, graphs, maps, and other visuals
• Power Map: another visualization tool for creating immersive 3D visuals
• Power Q&A: a question and answer engine that lets you ask questions about your data in plain language
Other Systems of Insights include the following:
Tableau
Tableau is considered as one of the leading tools in the BI market. Power BI is considered as an emerging tool in close competition with Tableau because of its back-end data manipulation features and connectivity with the list of data sources. Tableau is one of the best data visualization tools in the market and is used by medium and large enterprises. Power BI is closely integrated with Office 365 suite, and hence it is compatible other sources such as SharePoint.
SSRS
SSRS is mostly used for Pixel perfect reporting and average dash-boarding features.
No such limit in SSRS. It can connect too much larger datasets as compared to Power BI.
SSRS covers a vast range of data sources to connect with for BI reporting.
SSRS pricing details are available only upon request.
SQL Server Enterprise License. It is available on cloud - AWS, Azure, and other providers.
SSRS implementation is complex as compared with Power BI.
Install and run Power BI Desktop
Step 1) Visit https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/desktop/ and select Download free button Step 2) You will be redirected to a Microsoft store and select Get button.
Step 3) Click on the Install button.
Step 4) you can see progress status on the screen.
Step 5) before welcome screen you will ask to register to enter.
Step 6) when you run Power BI Desktop, a Welcome screen is displayed.
PRACTICAL OVERVIEW
• ADMIN
• CONCEPTS
• MODEL
• Visualization
Top comments (1)
Thank you! Informative! Power BI can help you save a lot of time, effort, and money when preparing reports. Having configured its infrastructure once, the specialist will enjoy automatically generated reports for a long time. Also take a look at the Power BI dashboard template for analytics tracking here.