Power Query Cookbook: Use effective and powerful queries in Power BI Desktop and Dataflows to prepare and transform your data

Andrea Janicijevic

Oct 2021 · Packt Publishing Ltd

About this ebook

Leverage your source data from hundreds of different connections, perform millions of different transformations, and easily manage highly complex data lifecycles with Power QueryKey FeaturesCollect, combine, and transform data using Power Query's data connectivity and data preparation featuresOvercome the problems faced while accessing data from multiple sources and reshape it to meet your business requirementsExplore how the M language can be used to write your own customized solutionsBook Description

Power Query is a data preparation tool that enables data engineers and business users to connect, reshape, enrich, and transform their data to facilitate relevant business insights and analysis. With Power Query's wide range of features, you can perform no-code transformations and complex M code functions at the same time to get the most out of your data.

This Power Query book will help you to connect to data sources, achieve intuitive transformations, and get to grips with preparation practices. Starting with a general overview of Power Query and what it can do, the book advances to cover more complex topics such as M code and performance optimization. You'll learn how to extend these capabilities by gradually stepping away from the Power Query GUI and into the M programming language. Additionally, the book also shows you how to use Power Query Online within Power BI Dataflows.

By the end of the book, you'll be able to leverage your source data, understand your data better, and enrich it with a full stack of no-code and custom features that you'll learn to design by yourself for your business requirements.

What you will learnUnderstand how to use Power Query to connect and explore dataExplore ways to reshape and enrich dataDiscover the potential of Power Query across the Microsoft platformBuild complex and custom transformationsUse M code to write new queries against data sourcesUse the Power Query Online tool within Power BI DataflowsImplement best practices such as reusing dataflows, optimizing expanding table operations, and field mappingWho this book is for

This book is for data analysts, BI developers, data engineers, and anyone looking for a desk reference guide to learn how Power Query can be used with different Microsoft products to handle data of varying complexity. Beginner-level knowledge of Power BI and the M Language will help you to get the best out of this book.

Ratings and reviews

Power Query Cookbook is an excellent introduction to Power Query. The Cookbook format presents individual concepts through small projects, or Recipes. Instead of following a traditional textbook format, where a few projects are followed from the beginning of the book to the end, in this book each Recipe is atomic, meaning each can be followed individually without having to lead specific versions of files created along the way. Every project lists the software, framework, OS, and memory requirements for the project, so learners will never find out in the middle of a project that they need a Pro or Premium license to perform specific tasks. The Cookbook format is conducive to learning concepts individually, as well as chaining them together. It is also excellent as a reference, since each Recipe can be reworked without relying on files modified in earlier portions of the book. The book starts from bare bones installation, moves through connecting to common data sources, exploring data through the UI, shaping and combining data, and finishes off with more advanced concepts such as query optimization (both through use of the UI and diagnostics), custom columns and functions, and the use of dataflows. The Advanced Editor and the M code is introduce in the first chapter, and throughout the book. This is a refreshing change from most books, which relegate it to the end if they mention it at all. There is also a plethora of pictures, almost every menu selection is shown, which makes it possible to follow along even when away from your computer. For myself this book was a great refresher on basic Power Query concepts, and I learned some new advanced concepts I had not seen before, and will likely use the next time I'm bringing in data to Power BI. One such example is the use of Clustering match strength to clean data.

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About the author

Andrea Janicijevic is a cloud solution architect and works in the world of analytics and business intelligence, constantly expanding her knowledge in the field of data. From the outset, she has been working on analytics platforms, helping clients to better adopt cloud technology across a wide range of industries and company sizes. She studied economics and management of innovation and technology at Bocconi University in Milan and during her studies, she started working at Microsoft in 2018. She began working with the Microsoft analytics platform, including Power BI, becoming a trusted technical advisor for business and technical users. She later started collaborating with Packt, accepting the challenge of sharing her experience with Power Query.