Power BI is a powerful business intelligence tool developed by Microsoft that helps users visualize and share insights from their data. It consists of several building blocks that work together to create interactive reports and dashboards. As of my last knowledge update in September 2021, here are the main building blocks of Power BI:
- Power BI Desktop: This is the primary authoring and development tool for Power BI. It allows you to connect to various data sources, transform and clean data, create data models, and design reports and dashboards using a drag-and-drop interface. Power BI Desktop is where you build your data models and create visualizations.
- Power Query: Within Power BI Desktop, Power Query is used for data transformation and preparation. It enables you to connect to data sources, apply data cleansing and transformation steps, and shape the data before loading it into your data model. Power Query provides a graphical interface to perform ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) operations.
- Data Model: The data model is the heart of your Power BI solution. It consists of tables, relationships between tables, calculated columns, and measures. You can define relationships between tables to create a unified data structure for analysis. DAX (Data Analysis Expressions) is the formula language used for creating calculated columns and measures in the data model.
- Visualizations: Power BI offers a wide range of customizable visualizations such as charts, tables, maps, and more. You can add visualizations to your reports and dashboards and configure them to display data in a meaningful way. Interactivity between visualizations is also supported, allowing users to explore data dynamically.
- Reports: Reports in Power BI are individual pages or canvases where you arrange visualizations to tell a data story. You can create multiple pages in a report, add filters, slicers, and other elements to enhance user interactivity. Reports are typically designed to provide a structured view of data.
- Dashboards: Dashboards are collections of visuals and reports that provide a high-level summary of key metrics and insights. They allow users to monitor important data at a glance and often include interactive elements like tiles, charts, and KPI indicators. Dashboards can be shared with others and are suitable for executive-level reporting.
- Publish and Share: Power BI allows you to publish your reports and dashboards to the Power BI service (Power BI cloud), where you can collaborate with others, schedule data refreshes, and access your content from anywhere with an internet connection. You can also share reports and dashboards with specific users or groups, both inside and outside your organization.
- Power BI Service: This is the online platform where you can access and share Power BI content, including reports, dashboards, and datasets. It provides features for collaboration, data governance, and security.
- Power BI Mobile: Power BI offers mobile apps for various devices (iOS, Android, Windows) that allow users to access and interact with reports and dashboards on the go.
- Data Gateway: When you need to refresh data from on-premises or other secure data sources, the Power BI Data Gateway helps establish a connection between your Power BI service and these data sources.
