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Getting Started with Importing Data Options

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meenati biswal
Getting Started with Importing Data Options

Power BI may very well be one of the most aptly named tools ever developed by Microsoft, giving analysts and developers a powerful business intelligence and analytics playground while still packaging it in a surprisingly lightweight application. Using Microsoft Power BI, the processes of data discovery, data modeling, data visualization, and sharing are made elegantly simple using a single product. These processes are so commonplace when developing Power BI solutions that this book has adopted sections that follow this pattern. However, from your perspective, the really exciting thing maybe that development problems that would previously take you weeks to solve in a corporate BI solution can now be accomplished in only hours. 

 

Power BI is a Software as a Service (SaaS) offering in the Azure cloud, and, as such, the Microsoft product team follows a strategy of cloud-first as they develop and add new features to the product. However, this does not mean that Power BI is only available in the cloud. Microsoft presents two options for sharing your results with others. The first, the most often-utilized method is the cloud-hosted Power BI Service, which is available to users for a low monthly subscription fee. The second option is the on-premises Power BI Report Server, which can be obtained through either your SQL Server licensing with Software Assurance or a subscription level known as Power BI Premium. Both solutions require a development tool called Power BI Desktop, which is available for free, and is where you must start to design your solutions. Power BI Training 

 

Using the Power BI Desktop application enables you to define your data discovery and data preparation steps, organize your data model, and design engaging data visualizations on your reports. In this first chapter, the development environment will be introduced, and the data discovery process will be explored in depth. The topics detailed in this chapter include the following:

  • Getting started
  • Importing data
  • Direct query
  • Live Connection

Power BI Desktop

Following the numbered figures, let's learn the names and purposes of some of the most important features in the Power BI Desktop:

  • Get Data: Used for selecting and configuring data sources. 
  • Edit Queries: Launches the Power Query Editor, which is used for applying data transformations to incoming data.
  • Report View: The report canvas used for designing data visualizations. This is the default view open when the Power BI Desktop is launched. 
  • Data View: Provides a view of the data in your model. This looks similar to a typical Excel spreadsheet, but it is read-only.
  • Relationship View: Primarily used when your data model has multiple tables and relationships that need to be defined between them.

The Power BI Desktop is available free and can be found via a direct download link at Power BI(https://powerbi.microsoft.com/), or by installing it as an app from Windows Store. There are several benefits in using the Windows Store Power BI app, including automatic updates, no requirement for admin privileges, and making it easier for planned IT roll-out of Power BI. Power BI Online Training 

Note

If you are using the on-premises Power BI Report Server for your deployment strategy, then you must download a different Power BI Desktop. A separate install is required because updates are released more often to Power BI in the cloud. This book will be written primarily under the assumption that the reader is using the cloud-hosted Power BI Service as its deployment strategy. 

Once you download, install, and launch the Power BI Desktop, you will likely be welcomed by the Start screen, which is designed to help new users find their way. Close this start screen so we can review some of the most commonly used features of the application:

 

 

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