Overview of Power BI
Power BI is a Microsoft Product. Power BI is a visualization tool used to analysis and represent data in visualization form.Microsoft Power BI is used to find insights, Analytics within an organization's data. Power BI can help us to connect with different data source such as Database, Files, URL, API, Sharepoint and build data sets, transform and clean the data into a data model and create charts or graphs, Tables, Metrix to provide visuals of the data.
Power BI is a collection of services, apps, and connectors that work together and form visualization from unrelated data and interactive insights. Data may be an Excel formats, Object, Json or URL and any database like Sql Server, Oracle,Teradata etc. Power BI easily connects to your data sources, visualization data in dashboard which can be share to anyone.
Elements of Power BI
Below is the list of basic element of Power BI which helps to Design, Create, Share and Consume business insights and Analytics in most effectively
- Power BI Desktop-An Windows based Power BI Dashboard development environment
- Power BI service-An web based service where dashboard report, Consume and share to the user online as centralized location
- Power BI mobile apps –An App available in Windows, IOS and Android which help you to easily open and see dashboard visualization in single click from anywhere
- Power BI Report Builder-Its used to create paginated reports to share in the Power BI Services
- Power BI Report Server-A server where you can publish your Power BI report
- Gateway-A gateway Services which make Power BI dashboard and Data Source connection live by using On premises gateway installed on the system and configure in Power BI Services
Download and Installation of Microsoft Power BI Desktop
Download Microsoft Power BI 64 bit (PBIDesktopSetup_x64.exe) from below link and installed on your system. Once installation done start building Dashboard using different Data source.
https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/downloads/
Installation Steps
- Click on PBIDesktopSetup_x64.exe.
- Once exe open click on next button as below snapshoot
- Follow next-next till below below snapshoot
- Click on install then its start installing Power BI on your system
- Click on finish.Power BI desktop icon created on your system desktop.
- Open Power BI Desktop and a welcome screen is displayed
- You can get data or see your recent used data source or you can open other existing report directly from above screen.Once you close the screen report view of Power BI desktop is visible.
How to Connect Power BI with data source
Once Power BI dashboard you are ready to connect with various data source.Below image show how to connect with data source select Home from riboon and click on Get Data->Select Data Source
Select data source as per you choice here I am selecting Import data from Sql server.Just click on connect.Once you click on connect its asking for your Sql Server server details as below give Sql server server name and select data Connectivity mode.Click on ok button once click ok after server userid and password and then connect
Data Connectivity Mode
Import mode
Import Data Connectivity mode import data into Power BI cache. Import connection recommended to used when the data size is less than 1 GB and the data is not frequently changed. In Import mode schedule refresh used to get the latest data. Import mode of connection provide you high performance as compare to direct query mode.
Direct Query Mode
DirectQuery Connectivity mode is directly connected to database and data. DirectQuery mode used when data volume is large and data will changed frequently.Its provide real time solution.In direct query mode every time query is triggered in database and fetch latest data from database which reduce performance as every time hit to database.
Select Database and set of table or view from which you want to build dashboard
You can load data or transform data.Once you load data its create dataset of your data without changes.But of you want to some customization in table then you need to click on transform data and you can change data type add column transform data and many more then click on close apply.Once close and apply done new dataset is created with your changes whatever you have done.
Report Build
Once the data loaded after changes made in table you can begin with build reports.
Sections in Report View
- Ribbon
- Report view
- Pages
- Visualizations
Visualization and Fields pane can be collapsed by select arrow to provide more space for report view
To create visualization just drag a field from the fields list onto the Report View as per below snapshoot