What is Power BI & its components ?

Power BI is a business intelligence service that allows users to visualize and analyze data from various sources, such as databases, Excel spreadsheets, and web services. It provides a range of features and tools for creating interactive dashboards, reports, and charts, and allows users to share their insights with others in their organization.

Power BI is available as a cloud-based service or as a desktop application, and can be used to connect to a wide variety of data sources, including on-premises databases, cloud-based data storage systems, and web-based data services. It also includes features for collaboration, such as the ability to publish dashboards and reports to the web and share them with others in an organization.

Overall, Power BI is designed to help users make more informed decisions by providing a powerful and user-friendly platform for data visualization and analysis.

The main components of Power BI are:

1.     Power BI Desktop: This is a Windows application that allows users to connect to, transform, and visualize data from various sources. It provides a wide range of visualization options and allows users to create interactive reports and dashboards.

2.     Power BI Service: This is a cloud-based service that allows users to publish and share their Power BI reports and dashboards with others. It also provides collaboration and data governance features such as scheduling data refreshes and setting up row-level security.

3.     Power BI Mobile Apps: These are mobile apps for iOS, Android, and Windows devices that allow users to access and interact with their Power BI reports and dashboards on the go.

4.     Power BI Embedded: This is a set of APIs and Azure services that allows developers to embed Power BI reports and dashboards into their own applications. It enables developers to include interactive and customizable reports and dashboards in their applications, providing a seamless experience for their users.

5.     Power BI Data Gateway: This is a service that allows users to securely connect to on-premises data sources and schedule data refreshes in the Power BI Service. It enables users to access and use data from a variety of sources, such as SQL Server, Oracle, and Excel, within Power BI.

6.     Power BI Maps: Power Maps allows users to create interactive, visually appealing maps to represent and analyze geographic data. It enables users to quickly and easily create maps that display data points, trends, and patterns across regions and locations.

        With Power Maps, users can:

• Visualize data on a map: Users can plot data points on a map and customize the appearance of the data points, such as their size, shape, and color.
• Explore data by location: Power Maps allows users to drill down into data by clicking on specific locations or regions, providing a more detailed view of the data.
• Add context to data: Users can add layers to their maps, such as demographics, terrain, or traffic data, to provide context and additional insights.
• Create animated maps: Power Maps allows users to create animated maps that show how data changes over time, providing a dynamic view of trends and patterns.

7.      Power Query: Power Query is a feature in Microsoft Power BI that allows users to import and transform data from various sources. It is a powerful tool for shaping and cleansing data and enables users to easily connect to, extract, and transform data from a wide range of sources, including databases, spreadsheets, web services, and more.

                With Power Query, users can perform a variety of tasks, such as:

• Connecting to data sources: Power Query can connect to a wide range of data sources, including on-premises databases, cloud-based data storage systems, and web-based data services.
•  Extracting data: Power Query can extract data from a variety of sources, including tables, queries, and formulas.
• Transforming data: Power Query includes a range of tools for transforming and shaping data, such as filters, pivot tables, and groups by operations.
•  Cleaning data: Power Query includes tools for identifying and cleaning up data quality issues, such as duplicates, missing values, and formatting errors.

8.      Power Pivot: Power Pivot allows users to manipulate and analyze large volumes of data from various sources. It is a powerful tool for working with data at scale and enables users to quickly and easily shape, transform, and analyze data in order to gain insights and make informed decisions.

      To use Power Pivot in Power BI, users must first import data into the platform using one of the available data connectors. Once the data is imported, users can use Power Pivot to shape and transform the data as needed. Power Pivot includes a range of tools for manipulating data, such as filters, pivot tables, and group by operations, and also includes powerful data analysis features, such as the ability to create calculated columns and measures, and to use DAX (Data Analysis Expressions) to perform advanced calculations.

      Power Pivot is an integral part of Power BI, and is designed to help users work with and analyze large volumes of data in an efficient and effective manner. It utilizes the xVelocity engine, which is an in-memory columnar database engine optimized for fast data processing and analysis, to handle and manage large datasets.

      In addition to these components, Power BI also offers other products and services such as Power BI Report Server and Power BI Premium. Power BI Report Server is an on-premises server that allows users to host and share Power BI reports and dashboards within their organization. It also provides data refresh and data gateway capabilities. Power BI Premium is a paid subscription service that provides additional features and capabilities such as larger data volumes, faster data refreshes, and dedicated resources for hosting and deploying Power BI reports and dashboards.