Forum Discussion

Applicable88's avatar
Applicable88
Impactful Individual
4 years ago
Solved

Looking for not equal rows

Hello,

I have two tables from the same source. The tables consist of machine data, for example there are OrderID's and the Datetime when the machine finished packing it. Unfortunately the leading primary key is not distinct, because the machine is reusing the same ID's after every few month. So I combined it in PowerQuery Editor with the Datetime to make a kind of composite key column, so now every entry is distinct. Since the first table has more then one entry per orderID I duplicate that and create a second grouped table where the entry is just existing one time. For simplicity reason I just add a date column not a datetime column.

 

Table 1:

OrderIDActionDatetime CompositeKey
1Fetch2021-05-01 101.05.2021
1Pack 2021-05-02 102.05.2021
1Finish2021-05-03 103.05.2021
2Fetch2021-05-01 201.05.2021
2Pack 2021-05-02 202.05.2021
2Finish2021-05-03 203.05.2021

 

Table2:

OrderID Datetime CompositeKey
1 2021-05-01 101.05.2021
2 2021-05-01 201.05.2021

 

Seemingly I should have a n:1 one relationship. My purpose is to use table 2 for better filtering and selection options, since every entry is distinct. But in the datamodel it says its a m:n relationship and I'm surprised. As far I know already one wrong row can transform it into m:n cardinality. Is there a way to quickly find the regarding rows, where I have more then 1 row of that entry in the second table? I hope someone knows how to find them.

 

Thank you very much in advance.

Best. 

  • Are you using the Composite key to create the relationship? If so, try making it a whole number instead (101052021, 102052021...)

3 Replies

  • PaulDBrown's avatar
    PaulDBrown
    Community Champion

    Are you using the Composite key to create the relationship? If so, try making it a whole number instead (101052021, 102052021...)

    • Applicable88's avatar
      Applicable88
      Impactful Individual

      Very good idea. Thanks PaulDBrown . After replacing all punctuation in the date with space and then combined the column with the order id I got a distinct primary key as a whole number to work with. 

  • CNENFRNL's avatar
    CNENFRNL
    Community Champion

    Little useful info can be obtained from gibberish. One thing is for sure, PBI isn't traditional RDBMS; concepts such as composite key, foreign key aren't mandatory in modeling; whereas relationships and filtering matter.