Forum Discussion
New to BI. Writing SQL queries to parse data. I am obviously missing something.
1) No, that SQL statement box is actually for SQL statements as you would normally write, not for the Power Query language (it's called M. I'm just going to call it that now). It's just not generally recommended to use that feature at all. You don't even have to write M language formulas yourself. The buttons generate them. If you feel ambitious you can write them yourself but it's rarely necessary unless you're doing really crazy stuff.
2) You just connect to your database and pick a table. You can mess with the query in the query editor from there. That's where you would do things like pick specific columns or filter rows.
3) Yes, this is done by merging queries in the query editor.
4) Using the buttons does give you the exact data you need. The order of operations is simply different from what you're used to.
I second Anonymous's view recommendation. I wish I had that option in my current situation.
1) No, that SQL statement box is actually for SQL statements as you would normally write, not for the Power Query language (it's called M. I'm just going to call it that now). It's just not generally recommended to use that feature at all. You don't even have to write M language formulas yourself. The buttons generate them. If you feel ambitious you can write them yourself but it's rarely necessary unless you're doing really crazy stuff.
You are advisng against filtering the data via SQL before I load the data into Power BI? I should filter the data after it is in Power BI via M or the visual querying tools?