Book Image

Learn Power Query

By : Linda Foulkes, Warren Sparrow
Book Image

Learn Power Query

By: Linda Foulkes, Warren Sparrow

Overview of this book

<p>Power Query is a data connection technology that allows you to connect, combine, and refine data from multiple sources to meet your business analysis requirements. With this Power Query book, you’ll be empowered to work with a variety of data sources to create interactive reports and dashboards using Excel and Power BI. </p><p>You’ll start by learning how to access Power Query across different versions of Excel and install the Power BI engine. After you've explored Power Pivot, you’ll see why Excel users find it challenging to clean data in Power Pivot and learn how Power Query can help to tackle the problem. The book will show you how to transform data using the Query Editor and write functions in Power Query. A dedicated section will focus on functions such as IF, Index, and Modulo, and creating parameters to alter query paths in a table. You’ll also work with dashboards, get to grips with multi-dimensional reporting, and create automated reports. As you advance, you'll cover the M formula language in Power Query, delve into the basic M syntax, and write the M query language with the help of examples such as loading all library functions offline in Excel and Power BI. Finally, the book will demonstrate the difference between M and DAX and show how results are produced in M. </p><p>By the end of this book, you’ll be ready to create impressive dashboards and multi-dimensional reports in Power Query and turn data into valuable insights.</p>
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
Section 1: Overview of Power Pivot and Power Query
6
Section 2: Power Query Data Transformations
11
Section 3: Learning M

Setting up a SQL server

In this section, we will need a few more things to run the server effectively. I realize that many individuals do not have their own SQL server, but you can download SQL Server Developer edition for free. The major difference between SQL Server Developer edition and the other editions is that although the Developer edition has almost all of the same features as the Enterprise edition, it is not for commercial use. If you want to see the SQL datasheets that compare the various versions, you can download them from https://www.microsoft.com/en-au/sql-server/sql-server-2017-editions.

You will also need a Microsoft or an MSDN subscription, which is free, to download the relevant files. I am currently running the 2017 version, but you can download the SQL 2016, 2017, or 2019 Server Developer editions. There are a few differences among them, but overall, they are very similar. Please note that depending on the version that you download, the file size will, on average...