1. Self-Service Data Integration
with Power Query (Power BI Designer)
Stéphane Fréchette
Thursday February 19, 2015

2. 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: @sfrechette
Blog: stephanefrechette.com
Email: stephanefrechette@ukubu.com

3. 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

4. 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

5. Challenges with Data Discovery
Exploring, finding and connecting to data is
somewhat difficult
Data often needs to be cleansed and reshaped
before 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)

7. 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?

8. 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

9. 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!

10. Power Query
• Connectors (Data Sources)
• Transformations (GUI)
• Power Query Formula Language (M)
• Saving and Sharing Queries

11. Data Sources
Windows Azure
Marketplace
Azure SQL
Database
Azure HDInsight

12. Transformations

13. 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

14. 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

15. Demo
[Wrangling some data… and more!]

16. 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

17. 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

18. Oh, But Wait… There’s More!

19. 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

20. Demo
[Power BI Designer]

21. 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.

22. 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

23. What Questions Do You Have?

24. Thank You
For attending this session