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

Choosing a Python engine to install

Back to our scenario, to develop Python code for use in Power Query or Python visuals, what you need for sure is the following:

  • A Python engine
  • A package manager, to install the minimum number of packages needed to transform the data or visualize it appropriately

To select the products that best suit your needs, you will need to understand your Power BI requirements in more detail.

The Python engines used by Power BI

Just as with R visuals in the Power BI service, the following note applies to Python visuals.

Important note

The Python engine and packages used by the Power BI service for Python visuals are preinstalled on the cloud and therefore the user must adapt to the versions adopted by the service.

As you can imagine, the version of the engine adopted by the Power BI service is a bit behind the latest release (now 3.9.1). See the following note for more details.

Important note

To date, the Power BI service...