Power BI Components
Power BI is a powerful Business Intelligence and data visualization application. In this article, we will learn about different Power BI components. Gartner report places both Power BI and Tableau in the leadership quadrant.
Difference between Power BI and Tableau.
Power BI desktop
Power BI desktop is an authoring tool and is used to connect and shape the data, write powerful code for calculations and create reports containing visualizations. Power BI desktop uses the ribbon as a navigational menu to navigate to different available functionalities. Power BI desktop interacts with all the other tools in Power BI environment.
Power Query
Power Query is used for connecting and preparing data to create a dashboarding application. It enables users to connect and combine data from hundreds of data sources. It can be invoked using the Get Data option in the Power BI desktop ribbon.
Power Query Editor
Power Query Editor is used to edit the loaded queries or tables. It allows users to apply different transformations on the tables. The available data transformation options are consistent across all data sources. When you create transformations, Power Query uses M code (data Mashup) language in the background.
Power Pivot
Power Pivot is the calculation engine of Power BI. It is used to model relationships between the tables and create calculations. Power pivot uses the DAX (Data Analysis Expressions) to build formulas and expressions.
Power View
Power View is the visualization technology that used to create tables, charts and maps. It is embedded in Power BI desktop and uses the drag-drop feature for faster creations of data visualization. Some of the visualizations available in Power BI are :
Power BI Service
Power BI Service is the cloud-based service of Power BI that let’s you publish your reports, dashboards and datasets which you have created using Power BI desktop to the cloud. Power BI service will let you share your visualizations with other users and also refresh your data. Visualizations are published to the Service from Power BI desktop.
Power BI Report Server
Power BI report server is similar to Power BI Service except that it is on-premises and not a cloud service. It will allow you to interact with on-premise data i.e. within your firewall.
Power BI mobile
Power BI offers a set of mobile apps for all kinds of mobile devices. Using these apps, you can interact with visualizations and data located on Power BI Service or report server.
All these components are integrated into Power BI application.
About the Author
Chandraish Sinha has 20+ years of experience in Information Technology. He is an accomplished author and has published 11 books covering Business Intelligence related topics such as, Tableau,Power BI, and Qlik. Checkout his Amazon Author profile.
His latest book Excel Basics to Advanced covers all the aspects of MS Excel and provides exercises for self-learning.
Similarly, his recent book, Dashboarding with Tableau, covers all the features in Tableau and includes exercises for self-learning.
He has implemented IT solutions in different domains viz. Pharmaceutical, Healthcare, Telecom, Financial and Retail.
He blogs regularly on various IT topics. Check them out in the links given below: