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

datatype conversion

We previously discussed different Power Query types in Chapter 3, Data Preparation in Power Query Editor, in the Introduction to Power Query (M) section. We also discussed, in Chapter 5, Common Data Preparation Steps, that datatype conversion is one of the most common data preparation steps we take. In both chapters, we looked at different datatypes available in Power Query. So as a data modeler, it is crucial to understand the importance of datatype conversion. This section looks at some best practices about data conversion and how it can affect our data modeling.

Data conversion can affect data modeling

As mentioned, we already discussed the datatypes in Power Query in Chapter 3, Data Preparation in Power Query Editor, and Chapter 5, Common Data Preparation Steps. However, to emphasize the importance of understanding datatypes in Power Query, it is worth recalling it briefly in this section. In Power Query, we have only one numeric datatype, which is number...