Forum Discussion
Can't display the visual - despite simple model?
Super UserKudos for exploring the topic. Read about the preferred data model in Power BI (Star or snowflake). Don't join fact tables directly unless you really really have to.
At the end of the day your data model needs to be able to answer your business question. That means it may have to change over time, and you may have to use different data models for different questions.
In your scenario Table 1 is a dimension table that controls the two independent fact tables 2 and 3. That also means that 2 and 3 don't know about each other (that's how it should be). This leads to the effects you are observing.
Hello, thanks for your reply. This is all very new and interesting to me, but with fresh eyes, I do not see how to solve this problem that seems simple as an outsider...
So if Power BI can't handle showing the data from tables 2 and table 3 (even though they both relate to the main table 1), and I can't link between tables 2 and 3...
...then it is a dead end? It sounds like I'd have to separately merge each of tables 2 and 3 to the budget ID rows in table 1 and get the aggregate values... but then you can't work with any line item detail.
- lbendlin
it's not a dead end. Add a column from table1 to the visual.
You may also want to explore other BI tools. Qlik Sense in particular is based on an associative model which seems to better fit with your way of thinking.
Thank you - I will check it out!
So it was not working before because I was not using summarization. I had loaded up the same Budget ID from all three tables into a regular Power BI table with three columns. But they loaded as "don't summarize". Once I switched to "first" (text ID field), now I can see the three codes line up per row on the table as expected, since they're one-to-many.
I knew it didn't make sense that PBI couldn't handle this...