Intro to Power BI Azhagappan Arunachalam

 Senior Database Architect   PowerBICentral.com  (blog on getting started with, and using, PowerBI)

Agenda  What is Business Intelligence?  What is Power BI?  Enterprise vs. Self-Service BI  Power Query  Power Pivot  Power View  Power Map  PowerBI.com  Power BI Mobile (app)  Power BI Designer (in preview)  Power BI Sites  Power Q&A

What is Business Intelligence?  Business Intelligence is the set of techniques and tools for the transformation of raw data into meaningful and useful information for business analysis purposes. BI technologies are capable of handling large amounts of unstructured data to help identify, develop and otherwise create new strategic business opportunities. The goal of BI is to allow for the easy interpretation of these large volumes of data. Identifying new opportunities and implementing effective strategy based on insights can provide businesses with a competitive market advantage and long-term stability. - Wikipedia

What is Power BI?  Microsoft’s implementation of BI in a self-service mode  Compliments existing technologies  Easy entry point, and enterprise scalability  Comprises of multiple independent/standalone components than can be leveraged on their own, or combined to add more value  Ease of access, and low learning curve  Positions Excel as the center piece of this technology “Insights are hiding in your company’s data – see the impact of bringing them into focus with Power BI” – PowerBI.com

Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for BI and Analytics Platform

Where does it fit in?

What is Excel?  It's a calculator  It's an organizer  It's a task list  It's a documentation tool  It's a project management tool  It's a statistical/analytic engine  It's a querying tool  It's an application  It's a graphing tool  It's a mapping tool  It's the last remaining Microsoft cash cow!!! It spurned the widespread adoption of personal computers (PCs and MACs), and the last hold that still keeps people using the PCs

Power Query  Discover, Analyze and Connect to Data Sources  Extract data from a variety of data sources  Transform – cleanse and shape up the extracted data (builds a macro like code in M language and can be edited for finer control)  Load the data onto Excel worksheets, or BISM data model  Supported in both Excel 2010 and 2013  Queries can be shared by loading it onto PowerBI sites (managed by Data steward role)

Power Query - Demo

Power Pivot  Connect to data sources  Extract and Load to the data model (no transformation)  Data is read-only  Provides modeling capability  Create entity relationships  Create hierarchies  Create calculated columns, and measures  Supports a formula language called DAX (data analysis expressions)  Builds on Excel’s functionality  Supported in both Excel 2010 and 2013

Where can it be used…  Excel PowerPivot  SSAS Tabular

DAX Syntax  Eg.,  = [Field1] – [Field2] * [Field3]  = Table1[Field1] – Table2[Field2] * Table3[Field3]  = ‘Table 1’[Field1] – ‘Table 2’[Field2] * ‘Table 3’[Field3]  Unlike Excel, DAX formulas always reference a column  Excel formulas could be absolute ($A$1234) or relative (A1234), but DAX output is determined by it’s evaluation context 

Calculated Columns  The expressions always refer to a column (as opposed to individual cells, like in Excel)  All cells on the calculated column have the same formula  If different values are expected, then functions need to be used to FILTER and evaluation contexts come into play  Can be given a name – and recommended to name the columns right after you have the expression  Calculated Columns can build on other calculated columns  Calculated Columns take up space on the disk (Disk I/O intensive) since they are persisted  Best practice is to always prefix the columns with tablenames  Eg., = ‘Sales Order’[SalesAmount] – ‘Sales Order’[TotalCost]

Calculated Fields/Measures  Are written in the Calculation Area (Measure Grid)  The format is…  CalculatedField := SUM([Field1] * [Field2])  Calculated Fields use aggregates to arrive at a single number/measure  Best Practice is to not include the tablename  SumOfSales:=SUM([SalesAmount])

Power Pivot - Demo

Power View  Power BI visualization tool  Supports data from BI Semantic model  Could use filters, and allows for drilldown  Very easy to use, and can be hosted in SharePoint  Can export data in PowerPoint format (and data connections can be refreshed so the presentations always have the latest data) 

Power View - Demo

Power Map  Supports geographical mapping of data  Integrated with Bing Maps

Power Map - Demo

PowerBI.com  Pricing model – free vs. $10/month  Power BI Designer preview  Excel is not a pre-requisite  Supports multiple clients (Power BI Apps) – windows/android/ios

Tools  PowerBI Designer  DAX Studio  SSMS DAX Queries  SSDT 

In summary…  PowerBI is still evolving  Split between traditional and on-cloud offerings  Roadmap looks positive – and here is your chance to get on the ground floor

References - Links      Stairway series on SQL Server Central   DAX Studio   DAX in the BI Tabular Model Whitepaper w/ Samples 

References - Books (2 nd edition is being released June 1 st )

Questions?