Forum Discussion
How to normalize a table in Power BI
Hi,
Assume I have like 5 Excel tables I have imported into Power BI. Now these tables share many columns and they also contain unique columns. Every week more data will be appended to these tables. Suppose I want to normalize the tables to the 3rd normal form, what would be the best way of doing this?.
Thanks in advance.
We would need more details specifically of the data and information those tables contain but it would need to be done in Power Query. The techniques will vary on the quality of the data but essentially you would be duplicating/referencing queries, removing columns, removing duplicate rows, etc.
7 Replies
We would need more details specifically of the data and information those tables contain but it would need to be done in Power Query. The techniques will vary on the quality of the data but essentially you would be duplicating/referencing queries, removing columns, removing duplicate rows, etc.
I have a follow up question. If I have imported these Excel files (which don't support query folding) and let's say I do perform the normalization process in Power Query. Wouldn't that then lead to loads of duplicated tables that have been imported because even if I filter the table, delete columns and so forth, the data has all been imported. And as I append more rows it will drastically increase the size of the model. At one end I'm normalzing the tables to make queries perform more efficiently but at the same time I'm drastically increasing the size of the data by duplicating tables. Please let me know if I've misunderstood. Thanks.
Also I'm keen on hearing what others have to say about this. amitchandak, lbendlin , parry2k.
Like with any other ETL tool there is no free lunch. The price must be paid either by you (the developer) or by them (the end users). General guidance is that you have to pay, so that the users have an enjoyable UX.
