Book Image

Data Modeling with Microsoft Excel

By : Bernard Obeng Boateng
5 (1)
Book Image

Data Modeling with Microsoft Excel

5 (1)
By: Bernard Obeng Boateng

Overview of this book

Microsoft Excel's BI solutions have evolved, offering users more flexibility and control over analyzing data directly in Excel. Features like PivotTables, Data Model, Power Query, and Power Pivot empower Excel users to efficiently get, transform, model, aggregate, and visualize data. Data Modeling with Microsoft Excel offers a practical way to demystify the use and application of these tools using real-world examples and simple illustrations. This book will introduce you to the world of data modeling in Excel, as well as definitions and best practices in data structuring for both normalized and denormalized data. The next set of chapters will take you through the useful features of Data Model and Power Pivot, helping you get to grips with the types of schemas (snowflake and star) and create relationships within multiple tables. You’ll also understand how to create powerful and flexible measures using DAX and Cube functions. By the end of this book, you’ll be able to apply the acquired knowledge in real-world scenarios and build an interactive dashboard that will help you make important decisions.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
1
Part 1: Overview and Introduction to Data Modeling in Microsoft Excel
6
Part 2: Creating Insightful Calculations from your Data Model using DAX and Cube Functions
9
Part 3: Putting it all together with a Dashboard

Adding queries/tables to your data model

In Chapter 3, we concluded our extract, transform, and load (ETL) process by loading our queries into the data model.

Our transformed queries are now stored inside our Excel workbook. To find out where the queries are, you can go to Data | Queries & Connections. This will open the Queries pane to your right, as shown in the following screenshot:

Figure 4.1 – How to display the Queries pane in Microsoft Excel

Figure 4.1 – How to display the Queries pane in Microsoft Excel

Our queries are also stored in the data model. To access the data model, you can go to Data | Data Tools | Go to the Power Pivot Window.

Figure 4.2 – Enabling the Power Pivot tab

Figure 4.2 – Enabling the Power Pivot tab

If you are using Power Pivot for the first time, you will get a message box prompting you to enable Power Pivot. After a few seconds, you should see the Power Pivot tab in your command tabs. You can now open the Power Pivot window by clicking the green cube icon in the Data Tools group...