March 2026
Intermediate to advanced
478 pages
12h 7m
English
Content preview from Microsoft Power BI Data Analyst Associate Study Guide
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Chapter 7. Enterprise Power Query Best Practices
This chapter focuses on enterprise-scale best practice design. We will work through a hands-on exercise, importing a substantial volume of data from a set of text files. The solution will transition to a SQL Server connector and a Fabric lakehouse to compare performance and scalability options.
Power Query and Dataflows
Power Query is a data transformation tool and query engine that is incorporated into multiple Microsoft products and services due to its flexibility and ease of use. These include:
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Excel
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Azure Data Factory
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Azure Synapse Analytics
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Dataverse
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Power Apps
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Dynamics 365 Insights and Finance and Operations
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Power BI Dataflow Gen1
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Fabric Dataflow Gen2
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Fabric Data Warehouse visual query
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Power BI Desktop
The specific features and capabilities of these implementations vary a little based on the version and capabilities of the product, but the core Power Query functionality is the same.
The Importance of Query Folding
When working with enterprise data, query folding is one of the most important features to understand and utilize, particularly with large quantities of data. Query folding refers to the process of translating Power Query transformations into a native query that the data source can execute. This allows Power Query to push as much of the data processing workload as possible to the data source, rather than performing all transformations on the local machine (or wherever Power Query is running). ...
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.