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by intended 2809 days ago
Is this power bi..? Ah, I think it is. I’ve really tried to get up to speed with it, but it feels so alien to normal excel in many ways. I feel an existential dread when I drop a column in power BI.

But yeah, it’s very powerful. It’s very sql like in the way you have to treat actions and data.
1 comments
tomnipotent 2809 days ago
Yes and no. Power BI is a mixed cloud/desktop thing - the desktop GUI for creating reports/charts is actually pretty cool. PowerPivot and Power Query in Excel are add-ons that tack on the same analytical engine that Microsoft purchased to power new features in SQL Server. I believe MS is branding this all now as Power BI, but it's still a little confusing to be honest.

In the Power BI desktop app you can connect to standard RDBMS' like MySQL, Postgres, or SQL Server and basically it works like Tableau. The really interesting part is you can export these data sources and hook them into Excel (local or via the cloud).

> It’s very sql like

It should be, this is essentially using Excel as an GUI on top of technology designed to run an analytics RDBMS. It actually is an entirely separate interface from Excel and feels bolted on after-the-fact.

Here's an example of the PowerPivot Excel add-on screens:

https://i2.wp.com/www.kasperonbi.com/wp-content/uploads/2010... https://i.ytimg.com/vi/NDO6MpT70PM/maxresdefault.jpg

link