The parts of Power BI

Power BI consists of several elements that all work together, starting with these three basics:

·          Power BI Desktop.

·         Power BI service. An online software as a service (SaaS)

·         Power BI Mobile apps for Windows, iOS, and Android devices.

These three elements—Power BI Desktop, the service, and the mobile apps—are designed to let you create, share, and consume business insights in the way that serves you and your role most effectively.

Beyond those three, Power BI also features two other elements:

·         Power BI Report Builder, for creating paginated reports to share in the Power BI service. 

·         Power BI Report Server, an on-premises report server where you can publish your Power BI reports, after creating them in Power BI Desktop.

Compare Power BI Desktop and the Power BI service

Power BI Desktop is a free application that you download and install on your local computer. Desktop is a complete data analysis and report creation tool that is used to connect to, transform, visualize, and analyze your data. It includes the Query Editor, in which you can connect to many different sources of data, and combine them (often called modeling) into a data model. Then you design a report based on that data model. Reports can be shared with others directly or by publishing to the Power BI service.

The Power BI service is a cloud-based service, or software as a service (SaaS). It supports report editing and collaboration for teams and organizations. You can connect to data sources in the Power BI service, too, but modeling is limited. The Power BI service is used to do things such as creating dashboards, creating and sharing apps, and analyzing and exploring your data to uncover business insights.

How Power BI Desktop works

With Power BI Desktop, you can:

1.    Connect to data, including multiple data sources.

2.    Shape the data with queries that build insightful, compelling data models.

3.    Use the data models to create visualizations and reports.

4.    Share your report files for others to leverage, build upon, and share. You can share Power BI Desktop .pbix files like any other files, but the most compelling method is to upload them to the power BI Service.

Power BI Desktop integrates proven Microsoft query engine, data modeling, and visualization technologies. Data analysts and others can create collections of queries, data connections, models, and reports, and easily share them with others. Through the combination of Power BI Desktop and the Power BI service, new insights from the world of data are easier to model, build, share, and extend.

Power BI Desktop has three views:

Along the left side of Power BI Desktop are icons for the three Power BI Desktop

·         Report view – You can use queries that you create to build compelling visualizations, arranged as you want them to appear, and with multiple pages, that you can share with others.

·         Data view – See the data in your report in data model format, where you can add measures, create new columns, and manage relationships.

·         Model view – Get a graphical representation of the relationships that are established in your data model, and manage or modify them as needed.

You can access these views by selecting one of the three icons along the left side of Power BI Desktop.

Connect to data

With Power BI Desktop installed, you’re ready to connect to the ever-expanding world of data. To see the many types of data sources available, select Get Data > More in the Power BI Desktop Home tab, and in the Get Data window, scroll through the list of All data sources. In this quick tour, you connect to a couple of different Web data sources.

Let connect to data through web.

On the Power BI Desktop Home tab, select Get Data > Web to connect to a web data source.

In the From Web dialog box, paste your URL (www.bankrate.com/retirement/best-and-worst-states-for-retirement/) OR (https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/yasserh/walmart-dataset) Or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._state_abbreviations 

(Rename to state Name and State Code)

https://www.fool.com/research/best-states-to-retire

 address and select OK.

Let connect to data through SQL Server.

On the Power BI Desktop Home tab, select Get Data > SQL Server to connect to an SQL server data source. A dialog box will appear with the two boxes

Server

Database

Open your SQL server and copy your Server name and paste it on the first box provided. The Database name is optional. On Data connectivity mode tick import and click Ok.

Another dialog box will appear with options; window, Database, Microsoft account. Select window. used my current credential and choose local host then click connect.

SECOND METHOD OF CONNECTING DATA THROUGH SQL SERVER.

Import data by writing query

On the Power BI Desktop Home tab, select Get Data > SQL Server to connect to an SQL server data source. A dialog box will appear with the two boxes

Server

Database

Open your SQL server and copy your Server name and paste it on the first box provided. The Database name (write the name of the Database you are using). Compulsory.

Click Advanced options and open your SQL Server to copy your query and paste in the space provided, tick include relationship column and click Ok.