Self-Service Data Integration with Power Query (Power BI Designer)

Stéphane FréchetteThursday February 19, 2015

Who am I?

My name is Stéphane Fréchette

SQL Server MVP | Consultant | Speaker | Data & BI Architect | Big Data |NoSQL | Data Science. Drums, good food and fine wine. Founder @TEDxGatineau

I have a passion for architecting, designing and building solutions that matter.

Twitter: @sfrechetteBlog: stephanefrechette.comEmail: stephanefrechette@ukubu.com

Topics

• What is Power Query?

• Who should use Power Query?

• Power BI Designer...

• Sources, Transformations and Destinations - “ETL”

• Power Query Formula Language (M)

• Demos

• Resources

• Q&A

Self-Service Data Integration

46% “engaging in self-service tasks”

26% “planning to do so in the future”

Source: BI Survey 2014 - BARC’s annual survey of over 3,000 business intelligence professionals

Challenges with Data Discovery

Exploring, finding and connecting to data is somewhat difficult

Data often needs to be cleansed and reshapedbefore being consumed and analyzed

Any shaping is one-off and sometimes not repeatable

Combining and merging data from multiple sources is not an easy task

Volume, Velocity, Variety and Variability… (Big Data)

Enable self-service data discovery, query, transformation and mashup experiences for Information Workers, via Excel and PowerPivot

Discovery and connectivity to a wide range of data sources, spanning volume as well as variety of data.

Highly interactive and intuitive experience for rapidly and iteratively building queries over any data source, any size.

Consistency of experience, and parity of query capabilities over all data sources.

Joins across different data sources; ability to create custom views over data that can then be shared with team/department.

What is Power Query?

What is Power Query?

Discover, combine, and refine Big Data, small data, and

any data!

• An Excel add-in for Excel 2010 and Excel 2013

• Identify and import external data

• Discover relevant data by using search

• Combine and transform multiple data sources

• Power Query Language M

Who should use Power Query?

Data Wranglers• Harmonizes and rationalizes data

• Brings together and creates meaning out of data

Data Stewards• Ensures data standards and cohesion

• Develops and enforces policies

Power Analysts• Develops dashboards and interactive reports

• Uses data models

Collaborative Users• Adds perspective based on their business knowledge

Everyone should use it!

Power Query

• Connectors (Data Sources)

• Transformations (GUI)

• Power Query Formula Language (M)

• Saving and Sharing Queries

Data Sources

Windows Azure Marketplace

Azure SQL Database

Azure HDInsight

Transformations

Power Query Formula Language (M)

• Informally known as “M”

• Functional Language similar to F#

• A superset of the Excel formula language

• Flexible, can be invoke dynamically

• Familiar, easy to remember

• Note to self: case sensitive

Saving and Sharing Queries

Share Queries and Functions• Requires Office 365 and Power BI

Accessible through “Online Search”• Query copied and executed locally

• No server-side execution

Data Steward • Monitor usage

• Certify queries

• Evangelize

Demo[Wrangling some data… and more!]

Enabling, Supporting Self-Service

From Corporate to Self-Service BI, providing data;

• Use Views

• Use Natural (Business) Keys

• Data Warehouse, Data Marts and OLTP… expose them!

• Keep complex transforms centralized, self-service for simple ones

• Metadata Repository

• Classify Sources

• Data Stewards

Power Query vs. SSIS

SQL Server Integration Services

To industrialize data integration, focusing on development and scalability

Developer

• Visual IDE – Source Control

• Extensibility

• Fine tuning

• Automation

Power Query

To help end users create and share easily “self-service ETL”

Business User

• Document centric

• Exploration

• Real-time, WYSYWYG

• Easy to learn

• Collaborative

Oh, But Wait… There’s More!

What is Power BI Designer?

A stand-alone tool providing rich data transformation and

visual analytics in a unified, seamless experience

• Currently in Preview - Free download

• Connect to all you data

• Visual analytics and reports

• Transform and clean data

• Complete analytics life-cycle

• Design once, view everywhere

Demo[Power BI Designer]

Summary

Power Query provides users with the ability to extract data that previously seemed impossible without a large IT footprint.

Once extracted, Power Query can easily manipulate data through many simple transformation commands that can be done with ease.

Gives us the ability to get new data sources into a familiar environment where we can further analyze and create beautiful data visualization.

Resources

• [Download] Microsoft Power Query for Excel http://bit.ly/1Ji3SFI

• Microsoft Power Query for Excel Help http://bit.ly/1CwEwuA

• [Book] Power Query for Power BI and Excel http://bit.ly/1L06nbj

• Microsoft Power BI http://bit.ly/1lhVKdk

• Power BI Preview http://bit.ly/1zWwAFS

• Channel 9 (Power Query) http://bit.ly/1Ji5Y8G

• Faster Insights to Data with Power BI Jump Start (MVA) http://bit.ly/1ktON16

• Chris Webb’s BI Blog http://bit.ly/1vwbfxz

• Reza Rad’s Technical Blog http://bit.ly/1EdVuR2

• Twitter: @MSPowerBI

What Questions Do You Have?

Thank YouFor attending this session