Book Image

Extending Power BI with Python and R

By : Luca Zavarella
Book Image

Extending Power BI with Python and R

By: Luca Zavarella

Overview of this book

Python and R allow you to extend Power BI capabilities to simplify ingestion and transformation activities, enhance dashboards, and highlight insights. With this book, you'll be able to make your artifacts far more interesting and rich in insights using analytical languages. You'll start by learning how to configure your Power BI environment to use your Python and R scripts. The book then explores data ingestion and data transformation extensions, and advances to focus on data augmentation and data visualization. You'll understand how to import data from external sources and transform them using complex algorithms. The book helps you implement personal data de-identification methods such as pseudonymization, anonymization, and masking in Power BI. You'll be able to call external APIs to enrich your data much more quickly using Python programming and R programming. Later, you'll learn advanced Python and R techniques to perform in-depth analysis and extract valuable information using statistics and machine learning. You'll also understand the main statistical features of datasets by plotting multiple visual graphs in the process of creating a machine learning model. By the end of this book, you’ll be able to enrich your Power BI data models and visualizations using complex algorithms in Python and R.
Table of Contents (22 chapters)
1
Section 1: Best Practices for Using R and Python in Power BI
5
Section 2: Data Ingestion and Transformation with R and Python in Power BI
11
Section 3: Data Enrichment with R and Python in Power BI
17
Section 3: Data Visualization with R in Power BI

Interacting with ML in Power BI with data flows

You can access advanced AI features directly through Power BI Desktop or you can access advanced AI features for data flows through data flows, which are easy-to-use tools for transforming big data into insights to be shown in dashboards. But, as you can imagine, both modes require the licenses mentioned in the introduction.

These features are accessible from Power BI Desktop, in the Power Query Home ribbon:

Figure 13.1 – AI insights in Power BI Desktop

The first two options (Text Analytics and Vision) you can see in Figure 13.1 use Azure Cognitive Services behind the scenes, specifically Text Analytics services and Computer Vision services. Basically, thanks to these features in Power BI, you can now use four functions to enrich your data through the power of machine learning.

Figure 13.2 – Cognitive Services functions in Power BI

These are as follows:

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