Microsoft Power BI is popular for a reason. This self-service business intelligence cloud service not only is highly rated—it’s free. PCMag reviewer Pam Baker says Power BI “does a fantastic job of combining power analytics with a user-friendly user interface (UI) and remarkable data visualization capabilities,” and adds, “It’s one of the best BI tools on the market and is one of our three Editors’ Choice recipients.”
Industries, where Power BI training comes in handy, include retail, manufacturing, telecommunications, and professional services. The service is a game-changer because it allows non-technical people to easily create graphical reports of data, filter data, share it with others, and much more—no IT department required, meaning even small companies can use it successfully.
Whether you’ve already begun a career in business intelligence, data analysis, ETL (extract, transform, load) and data warehousing or another data-driven area, or you just want to add to your job skills and marketability in the business world, getting a Power BI certification is a smart move. And when you’re preparing for a job interview, make sure you consider these answers to Top Power BI interview questions. While this isn’t a full Power BI tutorial, it will help you get started understanding the basics.
Power BI is a business analytics tool developed by Microsoft that helps you turn multiple unrelated sources of data into valuable and interactive insights. These data may be in the form of an Excel spreadsheet or cloud-based/on-premises hybrid data warehouses. You can easily connect to all your data sources and share the insights with anyone.
Here are some benefits of using Power BI:
Here are some limitations of using Power BI:
Power Pivot for Excel supports only single directional relationships (one to many), calculated columns, and one import mode. Power BI Desktop supports bi-directional cross filtering relationships, security, calculated tables, and multiple import options.
There are three main connectivity modes used in Power BI are.
An SQL Server Import is the default and most common connectivity type used in Power BI. It allows you to use the full capabilities of the Power BI Desktop.
The Direct Query connection type is only available when you connect to certain data sources. In this connectivity type, Power BI will only store the metadata of the underlying data and not the actual data.
In this connectivity type, data is not stored in the Power BI model. All interaction with a report using a Live Connection will directly query the existing Analysis Services model. There are only 3 data sources that support the live connection method - SQL Server Analysis Services (Tabular models and Multidimensional Cubes), Azure Analysis Services (Tabular Models), and Power BI Datasets hosted in the Power BI Service
There are four main types of refresh options available in Power BI -
There are a number of data sources that can be connected to Power BI, which are grouped into three main types:
Data can be imported from Excel (.xlsx, .xlxm), Power BI Desktop files (.pbix) and Comma Separated Values (.csv).
These are a collection of related documents or files stored as a group. There are two types of content packs in Power BI:
Connectors help you connect your databases and datasets with apps, services, and data in the cloud.
A dashboard is a single layer presentation sheet of multiple visualizations reports. The main features of the Power BI dashboard are:
Relationships between tables are defined in two ways:
No. There can be multiple inactive relationships, but only one active relationship between two tables in a Power Pivot data model. Dotted lines represent inactive relationships and continuous lines represent active relationships.
Yes. There are two main reasons why you can have disconnected tables:
The CALCULATE function evaluates the sum of the Sales table Sales Amount column in a modified filter context. It is also the only function that allows users to modify filter context of measures or tables.
Data is stored in fact and dimension tables.
There are three different views in Power BI, each of which serves a different purpose:
All of these can be used in conjunction. For example, you might create a report on your desktop, and then publish and share it online so that colleagues on mobile devices can read it.
A content pack is a ready-made, predefined collection of visualizations and reports using your chosen service (for example, Salesforce). You’d use one when you want to get up and running quickly, instead of creating a report from scratch.
DAX stands for Data Analysis Expressions. It’s a collection of functions, operators, and constants used in formulas to calculate and return values. In other words, it helps you create new info from the data you already have.
You’d use a custom visual file if the prepackaged files don’t fit the needs of your business. Custom visual files are created by developers, and you can import them and use them in the same way as you would the pre-packaged files.
Excel, Power BI datasets, web, text, SQL server, and analysis services.
Power BI Desktop groups the data in your visuals into chunks. You can, however, define your own groups and bins. For grouping, use Ctrl + click to select multiple elements in the visual. Right-click one of those elements and, from the menu that appears, choose Group. In the Groups window, you can create new groups or modify existing ones.
On a report page, you can resize a responsive slicer to different sizes and shapes, and the data contained in it will be rearranged to match. If a visual becomes too small to be useful, an icon representing the visual takes its place, saving space on the report page.
This is when steps defined in the Query Editor are translated into SQL and executed by the source database, instead of by your own device. It helps with scalability and efficient processing.
This is the programming language used in Power Query. It’s a functional, case-sensitive language that’s similar to other programming languages and easy to use.
Visual-level filters filter data within a single visualization. Page-level filters work on an entire page in a report, and different pages can have different filters. Report-level filters filter all the visualizations and pages in the report.
Master the development of dashboards from published reports, discover better insight from the data with the Power BI Certification Training.
You can configure an automatic refreshing of data daily or weekly, and at different times. You can schedule only one refresh maximum daily unless you have Power BI Pro. In the Schedule Refresh section, simply use the pulldown menu choices to select a frequency, time zone, and time of day.
Power Map can display visualizations that are geographical in nature. Therefore, some kind of location data is needed—for example, city, state, country or latitude and longitude.
Microsoft Power BI and Tableau are both data analytics tools. Power BI has an extensive free version as well as a premium paid version, while Tableau’s free version has limited capabilities. Power BI is considered more intuitive to use than Tableau, as some features in Tableau are hidden behind menus, which makes it harder to learn and use. Power BI has a natural-language query tool, which Tableau doesn’t. Overall, however, Tableau may offer more capabilities for those who are experienced in data analytics. So for the question of Power BI vs. Tableau, Microsoft Power BI is generally considered better for those new to data analytics, especially if they already have experience in Microsoft products such as Excel, Azure, and Office 365.
These are just some of the Microsoft Power BI interview questions you might encounter. To learn more answers and get a career-boosting Power BI certification, sign up for Simplilearn’s Power BI Certification Training today!
Shivam Arora is a Senior Product Manager at Simplilearn. Passionate about driving product growth, Shivam has managed key AI and IOT based products across different business functions. He has 6+ years of product experience with a Masters in Marketing and Business Analytics.
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