Book Image

Expert Data Modeling with Power BI

By : Soheil Bakhshi
Book Image

Expert Data Modeling with Power BI

By: Soheil Bakhshi

Overview of this book

This book is a comprehensive guide to understanding the ins and outs of data modeling and how to create data models using Power BI confidently. You'll learn how to connect data from multiple sources, understand data, define and manage relationships between data, and shape data models to gain deep and detailed insights about your organization. In this book, you'll explore how to use data modeling and navigation techniques to define relationships and create a data model before defining new metrics and performing custom calculations using modeling features. As you advance through the chapters, the book will demonstrate how to create full-fledged data models, enabling you to create efficient data models and simpler DAX code with new data modeling features. With the help of examples, you'll discover how you can solve business challenges by building optimal data models and changing your existing data models to meet evolving business requirements. Finally, you'll learn how to use some new and advanced modeling features to enhance your data models to carry out a wide variety of complex tasks. By the end of this Power BI book, you'll have gained the skills you need to structure data coming from multiple sources in different ways to create optimized data models that support reporting and data analytics.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
1
Section 1: Data Modeling in Power BI
4
Section 2: Data Preparation in Query Editor
10
Section 3: Data Modeling
13
Section 4: Advanced Data Modeling

Understanding fields

Fields in Power BI include columns and measures. When we talk about fields, we are generally talking about something that applies to both columns and measures. For instance, when we talk about fields' data types, we refer to the correct data types for both columns and measures. The Fields term is used within Power BI Desktop in different views, so there is a Fields pane in the Report view, the Data view, and the Model view.

Data types

When we import data into the model, the model converts that data, in columns, into one of the Tabular Model data types. When we then use the model data in our calculations, the data is converted into a DAX data type for the duration of running the calculation. The model data types are different from Power Query data types. For instance, in Power Query, we have DateTimeZone. However, the DateTimeZone data type does not exist in the data model, so it converts into DateTime when it loads into the model. The following table...