Continuing with Part 1, we will discuss ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) capabilities built into Power BI which comes with a powerful tool called Power Query. Power Query is a tool that provides you the ability to transform and manage your data inside Power BI.
Power BI - Supported Data Sources
- Flat Files.
- SQL Database.
- OData Feed.
- Blank Query.
- Azure Cloud platform.
- Online Services.
- Blank Query.
- Other data sources such as Hadoop, Exchange, or Active Directory.
Introduction to building blocks
For a Power BI consumer, the five building blocks are: visualizations, dashboards, reports, apps, and datasets. These are sometimes referred to as Power BI content. Content exists in workspaces.Here are the differences between selecting Import and DirectQuery: Import: The selected tables and columns are imported into Power BI Desktop. As you create or interact with a visualization, Power BI Desktop uses the imported data. DirectQuery: No data is imported or copied into Power BI Desktop.
data flow - Computer Definition
(1) In computers, the path of data from source document to data entry to processing to final reports. Data changes format and sequence (within a file) as it moves from program to program.We can define streaming dataset as it is continuously and real-time data which transport to Power BI. Power BI stores this data in temporary cache for a little time. The streaming dataset can visualize data in dashboard tiles (A tile is a snapshot of your data, pinned to the dashboard).
Power BI refresh types
| Storage mode | Data refresh | Tile refresh |
|---|
| Import | Scheduled and on-demand | Automatically and on-demand |
| DirectQuery | Not applicable | Automatically and on-demand |
| LiveConnect | Not applicable | Automatically and on-demand |
| Push | Not applicable | Automatically and on-demand |
You can refresh the data automatically by setting up a schedule, or refresh the data manually. Sign in to the Power BI Service. Browse to the workspace where you publish your reports, and find the Dataset that you want to refresh. To manually refresh the dataset, select Refresh Now.
You can perform a one-time, manual refresh in Power BI Desktop by selecting Refresh on the Home ribbon. When you select Refresh here, the data in the file's model is refreshed with updated data from the original data source.
You can perform multiple dataset refreshes daily, which might be necessary if the underlying source data changes frequently. Power BI limits datasets on shared capacity to eight daily refreshes. If the dataset resides on a Premium capacity, you can schedule up to 48 refreshes per day in the dataset settings.
You have a Power BI file that takes a long time to refresh. The long refresh time can be because the data source is slow, or the set of transformations steps used are heavy and makes the process of data preparation a lengthy process. For example, the Power BI report below takes 5 minutes to refresh.
April 2020 Update (2.80.
Get the latest version of Power BI Desktop from the Download Center. If you're running Windows 10, you can also get Power BI Desktop from the Microsoft Store. Regardless of how you install Power BI Desktop, the monthly versions are the same, although the version numbering may differ.Query folding is a feature in Power BI that is designed for query optimization. This helps optimization, as rather than running the first query to bring back all the data, we only need the smaller filtered data from SQL. If we add more filters to our data, we will see those “folded” into a single database query.
Most data sources support an incremental refresh. Incremental Refresh. Rather than refreshing the entire extract, you can set it up to only add the rows that are new since the last time you extracted data. For example, you may have a data source that is updated daily with new sales transactions.
To create the parameter, open Query Editor, click the Manage Parameters down arrow on the Home ribbon, and then click New Parameter. In the Parameters dialog box, type SqlSrvInstance in the Name text box, and then type a parameter description in the Description text box.
