Tag: Power BI

I’ve seen lots of data visualization tools over the years. Cognos, Microstrategy, ProClarity, and more. While I haven’t been a BI person for most of my career, in many of my positions, someone has wanted to try some new tool and eventually I’ll get involved somewhat. I remember first seeing the OLAP cube browser in SQL Server 7, and showing my boss a quick demo. While it wasn’t something that you could let an end user have, it also got my boss excited, and they started a project as I was leaving to implement some OLAP for the sales department.

When I first saw Tableau years ago (2008?) at TechEd, it was the first tool I’d seen that was really slick for the end user. I expected they’d grow quickly, and they have. Many people have looked at the Tableau tools as the standard for data visualization. For years nothing looked close, and as much as I appreciated Microsoft moving PowerPiviot and other tools to Excel, they weren’t as nice to use as the graphical tools.

That changed with Power BI. When I first saw this tool, instantly I could start to see the power of the tool. Even altering and changing a tool had an ease and power that I hadn’t seen since the Tableau tools. The initial release had lots of limitations and was just on the web. It was slow, and refreshes from remote data weren’t great. There were security limitations, and I wasn’t sure that the vision for the product made sense from Microsoft, even though I could see tremendous potential.

Things have improved, and I am somewhat amazed with the power of Power BI. A simple sales report is interactive. I can click on something intuitively and the values I see will adjust to focus on that item. What’s more, other graphs on the screen adjust. However, I don’t have to stick with simple graphs, I can add better imagry, such as this wine report, or this airline maintenance report that drives work. I was especially impressed with the analysis of Stephan Curry (which won the contest). Some of those reports I couldn’t imagine trying to build with other tools, especially SSRS.

Power BI is a great tool, and if you need to provide visualizations for end users, I’d urge you to take a look. The Power BI Desktop tool is great for modeling and working with data. I find myself using that for quick looks at data, building a graph in a way that’s easier than in Excel. I went through Microsoft’s EdX course, and was somewhat amazed to see the vast capabilities available in the product. Guy in a Cube, Adam Saxton, has a YouTube channel where he and Patrick LeBlanc (@PatrickDBA) bring you constant training and tips on how to get the most out of the tool.

What’s more, I keep finding more and more Power BI blogs and posts that I can add to Database Weekly every week. So many people are experimenting and finding ways to better analyze data with Power BI. This week we have a continent slicer, data privacy, collaboration, and more. With montly releases, I find that people are constantly digging into the possibilities and helping you learn with them. There are even developers building custom visuals that you can download. There’s even one for acquarium lovers. If you want to learn about these, Devin Knight blogs regularly about custom visuals and we include many of those links here and on SQLServerCentral

Power Bi is a great way to empower your users, reduce your reporting load, and make everyone happier. Power BI is a great way to let users experiment with data and actually decide what reports are worth investing in more with IT resources to perhaps optimize the performance of certain visuals. Give it a try to day, especially the desktop version, and see how you can easily start to examine data that might be important to you. Even the SQLDBAWithaBeard finds Power BI helpful.

Steve Jones

This past week was T-SQL Tuesday #75, with the topic of Power BI. There were some interesting posts, and we’ve included a few in this week’s newsletter. This was also the week where the winners of the Power BI report contest were announced, and it was a good entry. This was the one I actually thought was the best one. If you haven’t seen it, take a few minutes and go look at the entry and play with the data. It’s interactive, so be sure to see how well the Denver Nuggets have competed against Mr. Curry.

I first looked at Power BI last summer, watching a presentation and being intrigued at the ability of the tool to easily get data from web pages. I then talked with a friend that works with Power BI regularly, and they showed me how to loop and gather information from many pages, easily assembling the data into a dashboard that was interactive. I was very impressed, and I’m looking forward to doing a bit more work on the platform myself.

Quite a few people have been concerned that the development of tools like Power BI mean that there is less of a need for IT staff. I find myself thinking quite the opposite. There will always be data quality issues with something like Power BI, and there is a certain level of programming to build more complex reports. Not to mention the refresh and update process is slow, which can make the tool feel cumbersome.

However users will find some reports are more useful, or more important, and need some help from technology professionals. Whether that’s developing more DAX formulas and measures to enrich displays or just providing stable, clean data sources that consolidate data from various places, there will be plenty of work for IT staff that support companies using Power BI.

To me, Power BI is the type of tool that empowers users and lets them experiment a bit on their own. Once they determine what they really want, then they can engage me to build a more robust, reliable, and useful tool that helps the business.

Steve Jones