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DataSkills's avatar
DataSkills
Resolver I
3 years ago
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Best practice - related columns in Power Query

Hello there,    I am busy starting a new project and using a datamart on the Power BI service to create my model. The data I am connecting to sits in an Azure SQL server.    When I connect to my ...
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  • HotChilli's avatar
    HotChilli
    3 years ago

    You have correctly identified the 2 options.  There is no 'best practice' in this scenario -  whatever gets you to the model that you want is the correct way to go.  Powerbi bringing back the related tables is a feature that you may or may not want to use. It can be handy, especially if you want to make use of the existing relationships in the source without digging around in the source db.  However if you have full knowledge of the source data and you know how you want to transform data into the powerbi model, you may want to delete the related table columns and import them separately.

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    As long as you use a star schema and identify the Fact and Dimension tables you'll be on the right track.  The way you get there is up to you.

DataSkills's avatar
DataSkills
Resolver I
3 years ago

Thank you HotChilli. 

 

Would I be correct in saying that if I elected to use the existing relationships in the SQL database, and expand these columns out, I would end up with a larger data model, because the data would be less normalised? So, that would be the downside of using the existing relationships (vs the benefit of not having to understand the data structure because I would simply leverage what is in the database.)