MICROSOFT POWER BI

What is Power BI? Since this is a course aimed at beginners,

let's start by explaining what Power BI is.

Power BI is more than just a piece of software,

it is really a huge collection of services

offered by Microsoft for modeling,

analyzing, and visualizing data.

When we say data modeling, we're talking about the process

of organizing and preparing data

for storing it in a database.

This may involve filtering out rows we don't need,

removing unnecessary or redundant columns of data,

cleaning up data that is inconsistent or low quality,

or completely restructuring the data

to put into a new format.

Ultimately, the practice of data modeling

ensures that our data is consistent and accurate

because inaccurate and inconsistent data

leads to bad results when we start analyzing it.

There are numerous techniques in data modeling,

and many potential types of data models.

We can't cover them all in this course,

but in this week's videos,

we're going to discuss data modeling in greater depth

particularly in the context of Power BI.

After we model our data, we can then visualize it.

Data visualization is the graphical representation of data

and we see it around us every day.

For example, in newspaper and magazine articles

telling us about the state of the economy,

or showing how a sports team's fortunes

have declined over time, or showing how much time is left

until we reach a deadline at work.

Teachers, authors, journalists, engineers,

professionals from all over the world

use charts and infographics to put data

into these visualizations

because they make easier to interpret

what's happening in the data.

I can give you a table of numbers

that increase over a period of 12 months,

but most people are going to find it easier

to see the trend in those numbers

and get a sense of their scale

when we plot those numbers on a chart.

Power BI works by getting data from some data source

like a database, spreadsheet, text file, or off a webpage

and then loading into a data model.

That data model then allows you

to build data visualizations.

The core tool in this process is Power BI Desktop.

Power BI Desktop is a free desktop application

from Microsoft that can be installed

on your Windows machine,

and it is the primary tool for creating data models

and reports in Power BI.

From Power BI Desktop, you can save your reports locally

to your hard drive as a document,

which has a file extension of PBIX.

Power BI developers often refer

to these locally stored reports as PBIX files.

In this course, you'll be asked to save your reports

as PBIX files on your hard drive.

In a few exercises,
we'll even involve you opening PBIX files

that I've created in advance for you.

Within Power BI Desktop,

there's another application called Power Query.

Power Query is how you connect to one or more data sources

and perform all of the necessary data preparation steps

to build your data model.

When you complete your preparation,

Power Query will retrieve your data,

process it using your data preparation steps,

and load into the final data model.

This data model is stored in Power BI inside a tool called

the x-velocity in-memory analysis engine.

We'll just call it the x-velocity engine for short.

The x-velocity engine is actually a database inside Power BI

that stores your data model and compresses the data down

into a fraction of its original size.

This not only allows Power BI to work with huge data models

that are millions of rows in size,

but it also provides a huge performance advantage

when we're doing calculations against our data.

You'll never see the x-velocity engine with your own eyes,

but it is an integral part of Power BI.

With the data securely stored and compressed

within your data model,

you use the Report Editor in Power BI Desktop

to build your data visualizations

including all of your charts, tables, maps,

and other content

that helps you tell the story of your data.

We'll spend the majority of our time in this course

inside the Power BI Desktop Report Editor

and we'll often navigate back and forth

between it and Power Query

as we create and tweak our data models.

Beyond Power BI Desktop there are actually

many other capabilities we could explore

in the Power BI universe.

Probably the most important feature

after the ability to create reports,

is your ability to share them with your colleagues

across your organization or even embed them

in an app or website.

After all, what good is an insightful data visualization

if you're the only person who can see it?

To allow you share your hard work,

Microsoft provides two platforms

for hosting your finished Power BI reports.

The biggest of these platforms is the Power BI service.

This is an online Software as a Service portal

accessible through powerbi.com.

The Power BI service is a cloud application

owned and operated by Microsoft,

so it uses their infrastructure

to store and run your reports.

You can sign up for an account

using your company or school email address.

Once you've set up an account with the Power BI service,

you can either upload your finished PBIX files

to the Power BI service,

or you can publish them directly from Power BI desktop.

From there, you can easily share the reports

with your colleagues who also have access

to the Power BI service.

You can even share the reports publicly

on your blog or website using the publish to web feature.

We'll go into more detail about the Power BI service

towards the end of the course.

The second platform for sharing your reports

is Power BI Report Server.

This is an on-premises application

that your school or company can host

on their own infrastructure instead of in the cloud.

The Report Server sits behind your organization's firewall,

so it's not as easily accessible as the service.

And the Report Server doesn't have as many features

as the service, however,

it's still a great and affordable way

to host Power BI reports in the event your organization

already has the on-premises infrastructure to support it.

We won't talk much about Power BI Report Server

in this course but it's still an important part

of the Power BI universe.

Lastly, there is a Power BI mobile app

where you can access reports from either the service

or the Report Server on your phone or mobile device.

This requires you to develop your report

with a mobile layout, and I'll show you how to do that

in this course.

In review, this section has introduced you

to Power BI Desktop and Power Query,

the Power BI service, the Power BI Report Server

and the Power BI mobile app.

This course will primarily center on Power BI Desktop.

We will discuss the Power BI service

and the Power BI mobile app in further detail

later in the course, as well as Power BI Report Server.

However, the bulk of our time, we'll focus on developing

the skills you need to build your data models and reports

within Power BI desktop.

This is the most important part of Power BI.