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

Introduction to dataflows

Microsoft announced the public preview availability of dataflows in November 2018. Later on, in April 2019, dataflows became generally available. Back then, dataflows were a Premium feature. However, nowadays, we can leverage them in various Power Platform technologies as well as a Power BI Pro licensing plan. With that brief history, let's discuss what a dataflow is. In short, dataflows are a cloud version of Power Query, which is also known as Power Query Online. From a Power BI perspective, we can leverage Power Query's power to prepare and shape data within the Power BI service using dataflows.

Note

Dataflows are not only a component of Power BI. Other tools and services can also access data held by dataflows.

The prepared data is stored in the shape of files and folders, known as the Common Data Model (CDM) folder, in Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 (ADLS Gen 2) and managed in the Power BI service. If the organization owns an ADLS Gen...