Book Image

Expert Data Modeling with Power BI - Second Edition

By : Soheil Bakhshi
4 (1)
Book Image

Expert Data Modeling with Power BI - Second Edition

4 (1)
By: Soheil Bakhshi

Overview of this book

This book is a comprehensive guide to understanding the ins and outs of data modeling and how to create full-fledged data models using Power BI confidently. In this new, fully updated edition, you'll learn how to connect data from multiple sources, understand data, define and manage relationships between data, and shape data models to gain deep and detailed insights about your organization. As you advance through the chapters, the book will demonstrate how to prepare efficient data models in the Power Query Editor and use simpler DAX code with new data modeling features. You'll explore how to use the various data modeling and navigation techniques and perform custom calculations using the modeling features with the help of real-world examples. Finally, you'll learn how to use some new and advanced modeling features to enhance your data models to carry out a wide variety of complex tasks. Additionally, you'll learn valuable best practices and explore common data modeling complications and the solutions to supercharge the process of creating a data model in Power BI and build better-performing data models. By the end of this Power BI book, you'll have gained the skills you need to structure data coming from multiple sources in different ways to create optimized data models that support high-performing reports and data analytics.
Table of Contents (22 chapters)
1
Section I: Data Modeling in Power BI
4
Section II: Data Preparation in Query Editor
10
Section III: Data Modeling
13
Section IV: Advanced Data Modeling
20
Other Books You May Enjoy
21
Index

Data Analysis eXpressions and Data Modeling

The previous chapter discussed that Power BI has different layers: data preparation, data modeling, and data visualization. This chapter discusses Data Analysis eXpressions (DAX), and their relationship to data modeling. Although data modeling and DAX are connected such that you cannot imagine one without the other, our goal in this book is not to focus only on DAX. Data modeling encompasses much broader concepts, while DAX is the expression language developers must use to implement business logic in the data model. We assume that you have an intermediate level of knowledge of DAX; therefore, we do not cover basic DAX concepts in this book such as DAX syntax. Instead, we focus on more advanced ones with hands-on scenarios.

This chapter covers the following topics:

  • Understanding virtual tables
  • Understanding relationships in virtual tables
  • Time intelligence