Better way to load dataset

[SAG1]

Hello 

I am very new to power Bi , and exploring ideas on my own .

I need to do analytic report for Auto industry , my table has millions of records (think about auto sale in entire US for any period) , and i need to enable user to select any month and year to see the report for that period .

now my delima is how should i approach it ? is it practical to load millions of records in power BI datasets and then filter month and Year based on user input parameters ? i am sure not , but than what is other approach?

highly appriciate any help .

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

The answer is a solid "Maybe".  This is going to completely depend on what is contained in your data.  If you are getting your data from an SQL database, you are advised to set up a data View to limit the data to whatever is required.

I would certainly simply consider that you want to strip out any data that you don't need.  Remove columns you don't want.  Remove rows before a certain reportable date if required.

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

The answer is a solid "Maybe".  This is going to completely depend on what is contained in your data.  If you are getting your data from an SQL database, you are advised to set up a data View to limit the data to whatever is required.

I would certainly simply consider that you want to strip out any data that you don't need.  Remove columns you don't want.  Remove rows before a certain reportable date if required.

[SAG1]

@AnonymousYes data is in SQL Database , and it has months and Years Data (in millions) , i need to give user as a facility to choose month and Year and pull rest data accordingly , i am not sure how many views i will kep doing for that ?

[Anonymous]

I'd set up your views to be dynamic and have them as "Last Month" "Last Year" "Last 5 Years", stuff like that.  That will let your PowerBI creation to have access to a reasonable set of data to choose from and you can limit how many views you make.

[SAG1]

@Anonymous Ok i will try to do that , so the way i understand Power BI is, it brings all your data in memory first and then gives you ability to show different angle ,but doesn't gives user to pull just needed data (Not all) at click time ?

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Yeah you can think of it like that.

Power BI does have the ability to directly query a database as well, but i tend to avoid it where possible.

[SAG1]

Thnaks @Anonymous , How to do that ? 

[Anonymous]

When you set up your data source, there is a toggle "Import" or "Direct Query"