What is BI?

Business intelligence is a technology-driven method which helps you to analyze data

and to provide actionable information which helps corporate executives, business
managers, and other users to make informed business decisions.

What is Power BI?

Power BI is a Business Intelligence and Data Visualization tool for converting data
from various data sources into interactive dashboards and analysis reports. Power BI
offers cloud-based services for interactive visualizations with a simple interface for
end users to create their own reports and dashboards.

Different Power BI versions like Desktop, Service-based (SaaS), and mobile Power
BI apps are used for different platforms. It provides multiple software connectors and
services for business intelligence.

Why use Power BI?

Here are the most prominent use of Power BI tool:

 Pre-built dashboards and reports for SaaS Solutions

 Power BI allows real-time dashboard updates.
 Offers Secure and reliable connection to your data sources in the cloud or on-premises
 Power BI offers Quick deployment, hybrid configuration, and secure environment.
 Allows data exploration using natural language query
 Offers feature for dashboard visualization regularly updated with the community.

Types of Power BI tools

Now in this Power BI desktop tutorial, we will learn about types of Power BI tools.

Some Important Power BI tools are:

Power BI Desktop

Power BI desktop is the primary authoring and publishing tool for Power BI.
Developers and power users use it to create brand new models and reports from
scratch.

Costs: Free

Power BI service

Online Software as a Service (SaaS) where Powe Bl data models, reports, dashboards
are hosted. Administration, sharing, collaboration happens in the cloud.

Pro license: $10/users/month

Power BI Data Gateway

Power BI Data Gateway works as the bridge between the Power Bl Service and on-
premise data sources like DirectQuery, Import, Live Query. It is Installed by Bl
Admin.

Power BI Report Server

It can host paginated reports, KPIs, mobile reports, & Power Bl Desktop reports. It is
updated every 4 months and installed/managed by the IT team. The users can modify
Power Bl reports other reports created by the development team.

Power BI Mobile Apps

Power BI mobile app is available for iOS, Android, Windows. It can be managed
using Microsoft Intune. You can use this tool to view reports and dashboards on the
Power Bl Service Report Server.

Data sources for the Power BI

Data source Description
A workbook can have data entered manually or data,
Excel (.xlsx,
which is queried and loaded from external data
xlxm)
sources.
Files are simple text files with rows of data. Every
Comma Separated
row can contain one or more values, which is
Value (.csv)
separated by a comma.
Power BI Desktop You can use Power BI Desktop to query and load data
(.pbi) from external data sources.
Databases in the It allows you to connect live to Azure SQL Database,
Cloud Azure SQL Data Warehouse, etc.
You can connect directly to SQL Server Analysis
Databases on-
Services Relational model databases. A Power BI
premises
Enterprise Gateway is required.

Key terms used in Power BI

 Term Description
A visual display of information to achieve one or more
objective. It offers a single-screen display of
Visualization
information. It alerts users on issues or problems
Operational, Performance, Personal, etc.
A dataset is something which you import or connect to.
Datasets Datasets can be renamed, refreshed, removes, and
explored.
The dashboard is a collection which contains zero or
more tiles and widgets. It is used to represent a
Dashboard
customized view of some subset of the underlying
datasets.
Reports A Power BI report is one or multiple pages of
 visualizations. It can be created from scratch, imported
to a dashboard, and created using datasets.
It a single visualization found in a report or on a
Tile
rectangular dashboard box which contains each visual.

Architecture of Power BI

There are Power BI components are 5 main components released in the market.

 Power Query: It can be used to search, access, and transform public and/ or internal data
sources.
 Power Pivot: It is used for data modeling for in-memory analytics.
 Power View: This component allows you to visualize, analyze, and display data.
 Power Map: It brings data to life with interactive geographical visualization.
 Power BI Service: It allows you to share data views and workbooks, which you can refresh
from on-premises and cloud-based data sources.
 Power BI Q&A: It allows you to ask questions and get immediate answers using a natural
language query.
 Data Management Gateway: It offers periodic data refreshers, view data feeds, expose
tables.
 Data Catalog: This component allows the user to discover and reuse queries using the Data
Catalog. Metadata can be facilitated for search functionality.

Advantages of Power BI
Here are the advantages of using Power BI:

 Offers pre-built dashboards and reports for SaaS Solutions

 Provide real-time dashboard updates.
 Secure and reliable connection to your data sources in the cloud or on-premises
 Power BI offers quick deployment, hybrid configuration, and a secure environment.
  Data exploration using natural language query.
 Feature for dashboard visualization
 New features frequently added that are great for excel users.
 Extensive database connectivity capabilities Q&A feature publish to the web.
 integration with both Python and R coding to use visualizations.
 Power Query provides many options related to wrangling and clean the data.
 Post publishing the data into Power BI web service can schedule refresh without manual
intervention.
 Power BI backed by the superpower of with artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Disadvantages of Power BI
Here, are Cons/drawbacks of using Power BI:

 Dashboards and reports only shared with users having the same email domains.
 Power Bl will not mix imported data, which is accessed from real-time connections.
 Power Bi will not accept the file larger than 250MB and zip file which compressed by the data
of X-velocity in-memory database.
 Power BI can’t accept file size larger than 1 GB.
 Dashboards never accept or pass user, account, or other entity parameters.
 Very few data sources that permit real-time connections to Power BI reports and dashboard.