Calculated Columns and Measures in Power BI
Introduction to Calculated Columns and Measures in Power BI A guide to understanding the differences between calculated columns and measures in DAX for Power BI What is a calculated column? A calculated column is a static value added to a table, calculated row by row when you load the data. What is a measure? […]
What is Business Analytics
What is Business Analytics? Introduction: What is Business Analytics and why use it? And to generate insights that can help improve business performance and decision-making. Business analytics can help businesses understand their current situation. Predict future outcomes, and prescribe optimal actions. Business analytics can be applied in different domains and industries. Such as marketing, finance, […]
Divide by Zero Errors
A common error that analysts experience is the divide by zero error This article explains across a range of platforms how to avoid these issues with simple logic to make sure the division by zero errors do not get in the way of analysis Why can we not divide by zero? Dividing by 0 […]
When to transform data
As a general principle we should always look to transform data close to its source to gain efficiencies and minimise potential for discrepancies Over the last few weeks we have shown how data can be combined from multiple sources in three different ways UNION in SQL APPEND data in Power Query UNION in DAX A […]
Power BI KPIs
Power BI KPIs – an overview Power BI KPIs can be a very powerful way to draw attention to specific key performance indicators What is a KPI? a KPI (Key Performance Indicator) is a way to measure performance against a target, these targets can be financial, strategic, operational or simply functional. The important point is […]
Direction of travel on a map in Power BI
A global commodity trading client of ours had a requirement to create a dashboard that presented the latest locations and headings for a range of container ships This was part of a migration away from using Tableau, to using Power BI The internal BI team had been using a dashboard in Tableau which catered […]
UNION in DAX
Using UNION in DAX is a third option to combine data for analysis in Power BI We recently showed how to do this in SQL UNION in SQL and how to do similar in Power Query APPEND in Power Query It isn’t always possible to do this in SQL such as if the datasets […]
APPEND data in Power Query
Last week we looked at how to combine datasets in SQL using UNION UNION in SQL – Select Distinct This week, we are looking at using the same source data, but doing the combining in Power Query, via the transform options in Power BI It is not always possible to combine the data SQL, particularly […]
UNION in SQL
A Guide to Using UNION in SQL: Combining and Manipulating Data Introduction: Understanding the Purpose and Functionality of UNION in SQL The SQL UNION operator allows us to merge the results of two or more SELECT statements into a single result set. It performs a set operation by combining rows from different tables based on […]
Joins in SQL
Joins in SQL: A simplified guide Introduction to joins in SQL This guide is aimed at explaining in simple terms the different types of joins between tables in SQL We use simplified real life examples combining data from Products, Stores, Sales and Inventory What we will not do unlike other guides we have seen is […]
