Power Query

Power Query

 Power Query is a data transformation and data preparation engine.

 It has a graphical interface for getting data from sources and a

Power Query Editor for applying transformations.

 It can perform the extract, transform, and load (ETL) processing of

data.
Where can you use Power Query?

 Microsoft Products

 MS Excel

 Power BI

 SQL Server Analysis Services

How Power Query helps with data
acquisition?

 Power Query enables connectivity to a wide range of data sources.

 Power Query defines a repeatable process (query) that can be easily

refreshed in the future to get up-to-date data.

 Power Query offers the ability to work against a subset of the entire dataset

to define the required data transformations, allowing you to easily filter

down and transform your data to a manageable size.

Transformations

 The transformation engine in Power Query includes many prebuilt

transformation functions that can be used through the graphical interface

of the Power Query Editor.

 These transformations can be as simple as removing a column or filtering

rows, or as common as using the first row as a table header.

 There are also advanced transformation options such as merge, append,

group by, pivot, and unpivot.

Power Query M Formula Language

 A core capability of Power Query is to filter and combine, that is, to mash-

up data from one or more of a rich collection of supported data sources.

Such data mashup is expressed using the Power Query M Formula

Language.

 M is the powerful language behind the scene of Power Query. Any

transformation applied in Power Query is written in M language.

 It is a functional and case-sensitive language

 Syntax of M
 M Language has two blocks of programming:
 let expression block - definition of all variables
 in expression block – output (Everything you put in this block will be the output of
your query)
 Examples
Where to write/view M Code?

Two Options

 Formula Bar

 Advanced Editor