Power BI Data Analysis and Visualization

Suren Machiraju, Suraj Gaurav

• Publisher: De|G Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781547416783
• eBook ISBN: 9781547400744
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Data Visualisation
• Index: Business

Power BI Data Analysis and Visualization provides a roadmap to vendor choices and highlights why Microsoft's Power BI is a very viable, cost effective option for data visualization. The book covers the fundamentals and most commonly used features of Power BI, but also includes an in-depth discussion of advanced Power BI features such as natural language queries; embedding Power BI dashboards; and live streaming data. It discusses real solutions to extract data from the ERP application, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, and also offers ways to host the Power BI Dashboard as an Azure application, extracting data from popular data sources like Microsoft SQL Server and open-source PostgreSQL.

Authored by Microsoft experts, this book uses real-world coding samples and screenshots to spotlight how to create reports, embed them in a webpage, view them across multiple platforms, and more. Business owners, IT professionals, data scientists, and analysts will benefit from this thorough presentation of Power BI and its functions.

Chapter 1
Introducing Data Visualization

Overview of Technology

Data visualization is the concept of presenting data through visuals, such as infographics, charts, Sparkline, and geographic maps, etc. The presentation of data through visuals makes it more appealing to users and allows decision makers to view data analytics in a visual or graphic format. It helps users to easily identify difficult concepts or new patterns related to data. Data visualization tools help to easily recognize patterns, trends, and correlations that are otherwise difficult to see in textual data. In addition to interactive visuals, you can drill down into charts and graphs to access the details of the information displayed. You can also process data as per your requirements.

Importance of Data Visualization

It is easier for the human brain to process the graphical visual representation of data versus textual information. For example, charts or graphs can represent large complex data in a more clear and effective manner than in a spreadsheet or textual report. Data visualization provides an efficient way to communicate concepts in general.

Data visualization helps in:

–Identifying areas of enhancement

–Identifying factors that influence customer behavior

–Defining a presentation place for the products

–Forecasting sales volumes

–Democratizing data and analytics

–Presenting data-driven insights to all resources within an organization

–Creating big data and advanced analytics projects

–Interpreting complex algorithms easier than numerical outputs

Data Visualization Tools

There are several data visualization tools available in the market. Some of them are listed as follows:

–Microsoft Power BI (This book focuses on this tool.)

–Tableau

–Qlik

Understanding Power BI

Power BI is a business analytics reporting tool introduced by Microsoft to create interactive business reports. It incorporates several analytics features to provide business insights across an organization. Prior to Power BI, end-users were dependent on information technology staff and database administrators for creating business reports and dashboards. Now, end-users can create business reports and dashboards on their own with the help of Power BI. The Power BI Datasets feature allows users to represent data and create visualizations based on the data. The concept of Power BI is illustrated in Figure 1.1.

Figure 1.1: Concept of Power BI

Comparing Microsoft Power BI and Tableau

Tableau and Microsoft Power BI are listed as the top competitors in the list of the BI and data visualization tools. Both tools are easy to use and support a large collection of visuals to present data in a visualized format.

Table 1.1 lists the comparison between Microsoft Power BI and Tableau on several parameters:

Table 1.1: Comparison between Microsoft Power BI and Tableau

Parameter	Data Visualization Tools
	Microsoft Power BI	Tableau
Overview	Provides a full overview of the most critical data of an organization.	Leverages data discovery for any type of business user.
User interface	Provides an easy-to-use interface like Excel.	Provides an easy-to-use interface.
Infrastructure support	Provides better support than Tableau.	Provides limited infrastructure support.
Dashboards	Provides scalable dashboards that allow users to select the desired visualization as a blueprint and use the navigation to drag and drop data into the visualization.	Allows users to embed dashboa...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Chapter 1: Introducing Data Visualization
• Chapter 2: Power BI Azure Application
• Chapter 3: Power BI on Microsoft Stack
• Chapter 4: Power BI on Open Source Stack
• Chapter 5: Power BI on ERP Applications
• Chapter 6: Conclusion
• Index