Virtual Relationship with TREATAS

Handling relationships is an essential aspect of any data modeling exercise. If done correctly, it can save a lot of time and effort. Power BI offers many-to-many relationships, but at times it adds many complexities. And hence, experts advise caution while using many-to-many relationships in Power BI.

TREATAS offers a relatively simple solution in this case. Let us understand this with the following example.

Following are two sample tables:

Table 1:

Table 2:

Objective

Calculate the Estimate vs. Actual report for each Project & Team.

As we notice, both the Project Number and Team have multiple values in both tables. If we establish a relationship, it is many-to-many.

For this exercise, we do not establish any relationship between the two tables.

Creating Basic Calculations

Added two measures for getting the total of Estimate and Actual Hours

Estimate Hours = SUM(table1[Estimate]) 
 
Actual Hours = SUM(table2[Hours])

Creating Measures using TREATAS

TREATAS applies the result of a table expression as filters to columns from an unrelated table. It returns a table containing all the rows in column(s) that are in the expression.

Total Hours Team =
CALCULATE(
   [Actual Hours],
   TREATAS(VALUES(table1[Team]),table2[Team]),
   TREATAS(VALUES(table1[Project_Number]),table2[PR_Number])
)

In the above example, TREATAS is doing the following:

Using the VALUES function, I am supplying a list of all unique Teams and Project Number from table1
Using TREATAS to create a virtual many-to-one relationship on Teams and Project Number