Power BI is a Business Intelligence tool and provides Data Visualization that converts data from various data sources to interactive dashboards and BI reports. Power BI provides interactive visualizations with self-service business intelligence capabilities that allows end users to create reports and dashboards by themselves, without having to depend on information technology staff or database administrators. Power BI provides multiple software, connector, and services - Power BI desktop, Power BI service based on SaaS, and mobile Power BI apps available for different platforms. These services are used by administrative users to consume data and build BI reports.
Power BI allows you to connect with various sources like flat files, database, Azure cloud, Online Services, etc. It also allows ODBC connection to connect to other ODBC data sources. You can seamlessly use different data sources in one visualization.
Following are the available data sources in Power BI:
- • Flat Files
- • SQL Database
- • OData Feed
- • Azure Cloud platform
- • Online Services (MS CRM, SharePoint, etc)
- • Blank Query
- • Other data sources such as Hadoop, Exchange, or Active Directory
Why Data Visualization is Important?
Data visualization is nothing but the graphical or representation of information. It provides intuitions into complex data sets by communicating the key aspects in more intuitive and meaningful ways.
It is easier for human brain to use images, charts or graphs to understand and to visualize large amounts of complex data, than to go through spreadsheets or reports.
Data visualization is a quick and easy way to convey information or concepts in a universal manner. Data visualization can help to:
- 1. Identify key areas and hidden patterns.
- 2. Get factors that give better customer insights.
- 3.- Analyse and associate data and products properly..
- 4.- Make proper predictions.
Need for Power BI
The major reasons of being popular as a data visualization tool are listed below:
Analyse trends in real time: Traditional BI tools restrict you to historical analysis. You can access real-time information by using Power BI, so you can identify trends early. You can identify issues and improve performance by doing so.
Custom visualizations: Power BI allows you Custom visuals to visualize data in almost every possible way you can think. Thus, you get unlimited possibilities.
Enterprise-ready: Power BI and Power BI Desktop allows you to connect securely to your own on-premises data sources. You can connect live to your SQL Server with the On-premises Data Gateway and other data sources. It gives scalable secure, and reliable enterprise-grade information technology.