Let’s look at the video at Udemy.com called Power BI – The Ultimate Orientation by Paula Guilfoyle. The course is free. Below is the list of things that you will learn by watching the video. I am only going to focus on connecting and transforming the data.

• Download and Install Power BI Desktop
• Navigate Power BI Desktop and Online Services user interface with ease
• Connect both Power BI Desktop and Services to simple data sets
• Create visualizations, Work with Dashboards, View & Share Reports
• Embed Power BI reports
• Use Power BI content packs to connect to services such as Google analytics and Mailchimp

Have a look at the video for information on downloading and installing Power BI Desktop.

Wortking with Sample Data

She starts with three tables: Sales, Customer, and Product. The best thing to start with is to connect to the data and “transform” it. You need to check the data types of each of the columns. In this example, we don’t need to change any of the data types because Power BI figured the types out correctly.

Types of Tables

In this example we have two types of tables: fact and dimension. Sometimes fact tables are called data tables. Sometimes dimension tables are called lookup tables or filter tables. The fact table is the main table of interest. A fact table stores quantitative information for analysis. A fact table holds measurements, metrics, and facts about a process. A fact table holds the data to be analyzed, and a dimension table stores data about the ways in which the data in the fact table can be analyzed. A dimension table is joined to a fact table with a foreign key. There is a relationship between a fact table and a dimension (lookup) table.

I prefer the terms lookup and data.