Book Image

Power Query Cookbook

By : Andrea Janicijevic
Book Image

Power Query Cookbook

By: Andrea Janicijevic

Overview of this book

Power Query is a data preparation tool that enables data engineers and business users to connect, reshape, enrich, and transform their data to facilitate relevant business insights and analysis. With Power Query's wide range of features, you can perform no-code transformations and complex M code functions at the same time to get the most out of your data. This Power Query book will help you to connect to data sources, achieve intuitive transformations, and get to grips with preparation practices. Starting with a general overview of Power Query and what it can do, the book advances to cover more complex topics such as M code and performance optimization. You'll learn how to extend these capabilities by gradually stepping away from the Power Query GUI and into the M programming language. Additionally, the book also shows you how to use Power Query Online within Power BI Dataflows. By the end of the book, you'll be able to leverage your source data, understand your data better, and enrich it with a full stack of no-code and custom features that you'll learn to design by yourself for your business requirements.
Table of Contents (12 chapters)

Using Schema view and Diagram view 

You often need to visualize tables and columns focusing on a data schema and with the aim of performing transformations at a metadata level. Using the traditional Power Query view may end up being slower because the calculations are performed for all displayed rows, both the preview or the entire dataset. Another need is related to having a visual way to transform data whereby it is easier to understand the data preparation flow.

This recipe aims to show how to leverage the recently introduced Schema view and Diagram view available in Power Query Online.

Getting ready

For this recipe, you need to have access to the Power BI service and to have an existing workspace.

You need also to connect to an Azure SQL database with AdventureWorks data. You need to have access to a running database.

How to do it…

After you log in to the Power BI portal, perform the following steps:

  1. Browse to your workspace, click on New...