Category: Power BI

Enterprise BI, Microsoft BI Platform, Microsoft Fabric, Power BI, Power Query, Tabular Models

Comparing query design efficiencies in Power BI, with text files, lakehouse & database tables

Paul Turley

I wanted to share the results of a few experiments I recent conducted with one of my favorite sets of sample data. This will take at least two blog posts to cover, but I will summarize them here:

Compare data load & transformations with CSV files vs a Fabric lakehouse using the SQL Server connector:
Loading 20 million fact rows from CSV files vs a Fabric lakehouse, using Power Query.
Same comparison with deployed Power BI model.

Comparing Fabric data transformation options & performance:
Loading & transforming the same data with Power BI Desktop, Fabric Gen2 dataflows, Fabric pipelines and Spark notebooks.

Comparing semantic model performance in Fabric and Power BI:
Report & semantic model performance comparing the same data in Import mode, DirectQuery and Direct Lake.

BI Projects, Gartner, Microsoft BI Platform, MVP Community, Paginated Reports, PASS, Power BI, Power Query, Self-service BI, SSAS Design, Tabular Models

DevOps & CI/CD for Power BI

Paul Turley

DevOps isn’t difficult to implement for small and medium-scale projects, and simple things like managing version control in a code repository can save hours of lost time. Organization who are accustomed to managing large application development initiatives might expect to have a fully automated build and deployment process in concert with an Agile delivery process, managed with specialized tools like Jira, GitHub and Azure DevOps.

Azure Data Factory, Azure Databricks, BI Industry, Business Analytics, Dimensional Modeling, Microsoft BI Platform, Power BI, Power Query, Self-service BI, SQL Server, Tabular Models

Getting Data Into Shape for Reporting with Power BI

Paul Turley

Even for small, informal BI projects, shaping the data into a dimensional model alleviates complexity, speeds up slow calculations and reduces the data model storage size. I conclude this post by reviewing seven data architectures and the data shaping methods with different degrees of scale.

Azure Data Factory, Azure Databricks, Microsoft BI Platform, Paginated Reports, PASS, Power BI, SSRS Design

Learn Databricks, ADF & Paginated Reports at the PASS Community Summit

Paul Turley

Seven days and counting… For the past eighteen years, thousands of data tech professionals would travel to the PASS Summit…

Articles, Microsoft BI Platform, Power BI

A Developer’s Guide to Creating Bad Power BI Projects – Part 1

Paul Turley

It occurred to me that we have put so much effort into promoting best practices and proper design that there is far less information about how to create bad reports and data models. In that light, the purpose of this article is to talk about what to do if you want things to go poorly and make sure your projects fail – if not immediately, then sometime in the future – and if not for you then for whoever inherits the work that you have done.

BI Projects, Microsoft BI Platform, Power BI, SSRS Design

Drill-through from Power BI to Paginated Report – Report Recipe #4

Paul Turley

Navigation between reports is the hallmark of an interactive reporting solution, enabling the ability to drill-through and see relevant details…

Microsoft BI Platform, Power BI

Power BI Expert Resources

Paul Turley

Where to go for best practice advice for Power BI: The Data Gods One of the most common questions I…

Business Analytics, Data Visualization, Microsoft BI Platform, Power BI, SSRS Design

Doing Power BI the Right Way: 9. Choosing the right report type: analytic or paginated

Paul Turley

Writing this blog series while juggling other commitments has brought me to two realizations: 1. Posting articles in the series will be sporadic, and 2. The topics will be in fairly random order based on the projects I’m working on and the topics that are most top-of-mind at the time.

This brings me to the subject of this post: Paginated and Analytic reports.

Microsoft BI Platform, Power BI, SSRS Design

Drillthrough from Power BI to an SSRS Paginated Report

Paul Turley

Navigating from a Power BI report to an SSRS Paginated report with filters and parameters.
This recipe primarily involves Power BI report design techniques. I’m not going to get into the details of Power BI report design but will cover the basics with a partially-completed report to get you started. If you are less-experienced with Power BI you can use this as an example for future report projects.

BI Industry, BI Projects, Power BI, Self-service BI

How to Assign Pro Licenses to a Power BI Tenant

Paul Turley

This is a question that comes up all the time. Power BI licensing is not complicated but a common challenge is that the person who sets up a new Power BI subscription and tenant within an organization is often not the same person who manages Office 365 or Azure service licensing for the organization. I’ve consulted on projects for several organizations where folks just didn’t know who to talk to or how to proceed after testing the water with Power BI. After setting up a new subscription, IT professionals and business data analysist often don’t know how to license Power BI for company use and share reports and datasets with others in the organization.
This post will show you how licenses are assigned to users and, more importantly, what to request from your support desk or administrators who may be unfamiliar with Power BI and Office 365 user licensing. Keep reading for background information about why this is important and necessary.

Power BI, Power Query

Web API Data Sources with Power Query and Scheduling Data Refresh in the Power BI Service

Paul Turley

Using a Web API is a convenient way to expose and consume data over an Internet connection.  Exercising some essential…

BI Industry, Business Analytics, Power BI, Power Query, Self-service BI, SolidQ

Mastering Power Query in a Day – Full-day training in Seattle

Paul Turley

Following the Power BI World Tour, Seattle event on Oct 30, please join me for a full-day of deep learning. …

BI Projects, Business Analytics, Microsoft BI Platform, Power BI, Power Query, SQL Server

How to Configure the Power BI Gateway to use Dataset Connection Parameters

Paul Turley

A service provider or vendor might want to publish multiple copies of a report that should connect to different database…

BI Projects, Power BI, SSAS Administration, SSAS Design, Tabular Models

Power BI for Grownups

Paul Turley

The message from the Microsoft Business Applications Summit this week was very clear: Power BI is growing up. We have…

BI Industry, BI Projects, Business Analytics, DAX, Microsoft BI Platform, Power BI, Power Query, SQL Server, T-SQL

SQL, M or Dax? – part 2

Paul Turley

This is a post about a post about a post. Thanks to those of you who are entering comments in the original May 12 post titled SQL, M or DAX? This is a popular topic. And thanks to Adam Saxton for mentioning this post in his Guy in A Cube Weekly Roundup.