Analyzing Data with Power BI and Power Pivot for Excel (Business Skills) 1st Edition, Kindle Edition

This book did not meet my particular needs, though I think it is fine for a different audience. Although the book's title contains the words "Power BI" and "Power Pivot", it is really a primer on how to structure a relational database. I am a business professional who is highly conversant with both Excel and Access. I am not, however, the person who is responsible for laying out all the data tables. I sometimes need to take data from multiple sources and perform analysis which I want to visualize. I bought the book hoping to get insight into how to take my existing analyses and create awesome Power BI visualizations with only modest modification of the underlying data structures. This book did not meet that need. I'm headed back to youtube for that kind of tutorial.

This is a great book for those who want to understand data modeling. I bought this book hoping for a primer on Power BI, but quickly realized that that was not the book's intent -- the authors make this clear in the introduction. While I was mildly disappointed that it was not Power BI 101 or even DAX 101, I was glad that I learned what data modeling really is -- it is not SQL for Excel or Excel on steroids.As a newbie, I quickly learned that it was very easy to drag a column into a table and get a set of numbers that made no sense at all. One of the most valuable parts of this book is the recognition that nonsense data does happen, why it happens (e.g. weak relationships and bi-directional filtering) and how to build your model and relationships in a way to prevent nonsense data from creeping into your work. These lessons alone make this book worthwhile!

I've just started reading the book. Looks great. It's not a big book at just over 200 pages but in some ways that's good. It's focused on concepts of building data models which is a critical skill for finance analysts. Is focused on practical examples and illustrations. I've bought all of the previous books by these authors and found them all to be great.

Wonderful read; you will get ALOT out of it.I would recommend reading "The Definitive Guide to DAX" first so that some of the model building equations make sense.I have already applied many techniques and thought processes into my models.Thank you Alberto Ferrari and Marco Russo!

This book is a must have for anyone transitioning from Excel to Power BI and is taught in a manner that is helpful. I have many other books and this book does set the set standard for Excel users moving to Power BI. Excel will get frustrated with Power BI unless they have a good foundation of Power BI and how to develop models, relationships, calculated columns and measures.

You can really waste a ton of time with DAX measures if your model is a mess to start with. This book does an AWESOME job of explaining how to properly set up your model, which makes creating visuals and measures much much easier.

In my earlier preliminary review of this book, I was not able to locate any link in the book to download the Contoso database used for the chapter demos. But after delving deeper into the book, I discovered that it was not necessary to download and install the database.By sparing the reader the trouble of downloading and installing the database, the authors have already done the work of including the database in Power Pivot for each chapter's demos, allowing the reader to jump right in and begin exploring the demos and learning the skill to master Power BI and Power Pivot.The book is a welcome addition to my library of Power Pivot and Power BI books. So it deserves 5 stars.

I found this book to be an excellent introduction to data modeling using DAX. It doesn’t focus on writing DAX equations, but rather how to setup the relationships between your tables to maximize the performance of your data model when using DAX formulas.

I bought this hoping it would help me use Power BI but actually it is quite an academic book on data structures.There's some useful stuff in here like different schema designs and the different types of table like dimension and fact which has proved useful.On the other hand the text and screenshots are so small as to be almost unreadable without my glasses, which I don't usually need for reading. Could be a sign of my age or that they have tried to cram too much in to a book of this size and format.It is worth reading if you want to be a qualified data analyst using Microsoft products but not the right book for someone looking to get some quick wins with Excel and Power BI.

While you can import one table from an Excel file into Power BI and start adding fields into a visual, in most cases your data will be much more complicated. There will be multiple tables, you'll need to transform your data (create new tables, merge existing tables). In most cases you'll need to build a good data model before you can start writing DAX and creating visuals. You'll need to prepare right tables and establish right relationships between the tables.This book is a great introduction into data modeling with Power BI. An incorrect model will be slow, will require overcomplicated DAX measures and will give you wrong numbers at the end of the process - on your report/dashboard. This book will help you to understand what and why can go wrong and how to make things right. You need to understand your future data model while you transforming data in Power Query. You need to make sure your data model (star schema in most cases) is correct before you can start writing DAX. This is not what you can learn by yourself by just using Power BI. You can try all buttons in Power BI, you can try all visual settings and you'll learn a lot about ETL and data visualization in Power BI. But there is no magic 'build a good data model' button. Try and try until you succeed approach won't work well here. Read the book! And be ready that data modeling and DAX are much more complicated subjects than you expected. This is not a book for fast reading from the first to the last page. Keep it on your table for a while while your data models are becoming more and more complicated. Probably there is a better way to explain data modeling so everyone can understand just by reading one book, but if you know such way - you could become a famous author by yourself.And if you're serious about Power BI, then Alberto Ferrari and Marco Russo are your gods. They know everything about data modeling and DAX. You'll read other their books, you'll watch their videos and read their articles.

Not the easiest of books to read, but nevertheless provides a great insight into data modelling from the masters of their trade. Definitely recommended to anyone wanting an insight into analysing data. Other books by Alberto Ferrari, Marco Russo and also the excellent book by Rob Collie and Avi Singh would be at the top of my recommendations for anyone learning about PowerPivot, Power BI and DAX.

If you are already an SQL geek, this is useful. Even if you are from an advanced Excel background - avoid it. I teach advanced Excel, and found this book poor to understand. A couple of good points in it - but overall, no good.

Difficult read - complex language, tiny print (especially the screen shots).