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

Creating Cube Functions from Your Data Model – a Flexible Alternative to Calculations in Your Data Model

In the previous chapter, we learned how we could create measures to analyze data using DAX. These measures will be used to create PivotTable reports that will drive some of the key numbers and visuals in our final dashboard. However, there may be situations in our data analysis where we need to get calculations from our data model without using a PivotTable. Cube functions allow us to create flexible calculations to get or retrieve data from our data model so that we can have a more integrated and interactive dashboard.

This chapter covers the use of cube functions in Excel, which are a flexible alternative to calculations in your data model. The chapter will also cover the basics of cube functions and how to use them in your data model, as well as advanced techniques such as using dynamic array formulas and adding slicers to your cube formulas.

We will cover the following...