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wodraeve's avatar
wodraeve
Frequent Visitor
9 years ago
Solved

Nested join / join multiple tables in Power Query

Hello,

 

I have the following situation in Power Query.

A fact table that has foreign keys to multiple dimensions.

 

eg.

 

ID_Fact ID_FK1 ID_FK2 value

1234
1FK1_1FK2_1100
2FK1_1FK2_150
3FK1_2FK2_170

 

 

I want to merge the fact table with the dimension tables based on the ID's.

The caveat however is I want to do this dynamically.

So if in the fact table a new foreign key is added, it should join that new table as well, without having to change the query.

 

How do I know which column is a foreign key? Because this is data entered in a different table:

 

 

FK Columns

FK1_ID
FK2_ID

 

 

So what I want to do, is to join the fact table with every table present in the foreign key list-table.

For simplicity, you can assume that all tables and columns have the same naming convention and that all columns required are present.

So if in the above table the value 'FK3_ID' is added, it should join the fact with the new table 'FK3' on the 'FK3_ID' column. 

 

I'm confident the key lies in using a recursive query, but I'm unsuccessful.

 

Thank you. 

 

  • wodraeve's avatar
    wodraeve
    9 years ago

    Thanks for the reply, I'm happy to say I managed to obtain the result I needed, using Evaluate.Expression to retrieve the tables from the text names of the tables linked...

     

     

4 Replies

  • v-sihou-msft's avatar
    v-sihou-msft
    Microsoft Employee

    wodraeve

     

    No, it's not possible to dynamically nested join tables. Even we can substring the values from FK columns, it's still not supported to get a table or list with its name in Power Query. So for your requirement, it can't be achieved with recursive function.

     

    Regards,

    • wodraeve's avatar
      wodraeve
      Frequent Visitor

      Thanks for the reply, I'm happy to say I managed to obtain the result I needed, using Evaluate.Expression to retrieve the tables from the text names of the tables linked...