This article needs to be updated.(June 2023) |
Developer(s) | Microsoft |
---|---|
Initial release | 11 July 2011 |
Stable release | April 2024 Update (2.128.751.0) / April 2024 [1] |
Operating system | Microsoft Windows |
Type | Data visualization Business intelligence |
License | Proprietary |
Website | powerbi |
Microsoft Power BI is an interactive data visualization software product developed by Microsoft with a primary focus on business intelligence. [2] It is part of the Microsoft Power Platform. Power BI is a collection of software services, apps, and connectors that work together to turn various sources of data into static and interactive data visualizations. Data may be input by reading directly from a database, webpage, PDF, or structured files such as spreadsheets, CSV, XML, JSON, [3] XLSX, and SharePoint. [4]
Power BI provides cloud-based BI (business intelligence) services, known as "Power BI Services", along with a desktop-based interface, called "Power BI Desktop". It provides data warehouse capabilities including data preparation, data mining, and interactive dashboards. [5] In March 2016, Microsoft released an additional service called Power BI Embedded on its Azure cloud platform. [6] One main differentiator of the product is the ability to load custom visualizations.
It was used as Power Pivot and Power Query in Microsoft Excel. This application was originally conceived by Thierry D'Hers and Amir Netz of the SQL Server Reporting Services team at Microsoft. [7] It was originally designed by Ron George in the summer of 2010 and named Project Crescent. [8] Project Crescent was initially available for public download on 11 July 2011, bundled with SQL Server Codename Denali. [9] Later renamed Power BI it was then unveiled by Microsoft in September 2013 as Power BI for Office 365. [10] The first release of Power BI was based on the Microsoft Excel-based add-ins: Power Query, Power Pivot and Power View. With time, Microsoft also added many additional features like question and answers, enterprise-level data connectivity, and security options via Power BI Gateways. [5] Power BI was first released to the general public on 24 July 2015. It has several versions for desktop, web, and mobile app. [11]
On 14 April 2015, Microsoft announced that they had acquired the Canadian company Datazen, to "complement Power BI, our cloud-based business analytics service, rounding out our mobile capabilities for customers who need a mobile BI solution implemented on-premises and optimized for SQL Server." [12] Most of the 'visuals' in Power BI started life as Datazen visuals.
The software-reviewing company Gartner confirmed Microsoft as leader in the "2019 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Analytics and Business Intelligence Platform" as a result of the capabilities of the Power BI platform. [13] This represented the 12th consecutive year of recognition of Microsoft as leading vendor in the magic quadrant category (beginning three years before the tool was even created). [14]
Key components of the Power BI ecosystem are as follows:
Data importation and transform mapping for Power BI models and reports is conducted in Power Query. Common data sources include MySQL and Salesforce.
Power BI has many different licenses depending on use.
Some common user licenses are free, pro and premium. Free users must be part of an organization with a Power BI license. They can consume reports, and can also build, but not publish. In practice, creators need at least a pro license in order to publish reports. Premium users can publish like pro, but also have more features available for developing.
Premium capacity refers to the license of the workspace, not the licenses of its users or creators. Also, access to several features, functionalities, and kinds of content that are exclusively accessible through premium is made possible with a Power BI Premium per user license. [20] Premium per user is a special workspace license which was added in November 2020, [21] and can be a more affordable alternative to premium workspace licenses for organizations with few users which have advanced analytical requirements. [21]
Paginated reports for Power BI, which can be built with Power BI Report Builder, are a special type of SSRS reports with pagination formatting which can give better control of the layout of reports which need to be printed to paper or PDF. This is in contrast to regular Power BI reports which instead are optimized for presentation or interactivity and exploration on a screen. Paginated reports can, as of 2022, not be made with the regular Power BI Desktop report builder software. Instead, the standalone Power BI Report Builder has to be used, which can be viewed as a descendant of the SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) Microsoft Report Builder for Microsoft SQL Server introduced in 2004. It is also similar to the Report Designer in SQL Server Data Tools.
Power BI Paginated reports are saved in the Report Definition Language (.rdl file format), as opposed to the .pbix file of regular Power BI reports. The RDL format is based on XML, and was proposed by Microsoft as a benchmark for defining reports with SSRS
Paginated reports may be more suitable than regular Power BI reports, and may include printing of invoices or other repeated printouts of reports with a similar layout but different content, or for printing reports where text would otherwise overflow due to being cut off by scrollbars.
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