Power BI, Microsoft’s Business Intelligence set of tools, is getting smarter
1–10 of 22 posts
Re: Power BI, Microsoft’s Business Intelligence set of tools, is getting smarter
#2I've recently switched to start working with Microsoft products, with both this and their Dynamics 365 platform. It really seems like there's a huge opportunity here for guys like me to bring years of experience hacking on UNIX systems into the Microsoft world because there's a lot of "this is how it's done" and legacy systems thinking.
Many of the developers I've seen working in this space seem a few years behind, so I'm excited to see this published here. Gives me faith that I'm making the right call (even if it is a bit painful to develop for these things. XML and all.)
Re: Power BI, Microsoft’s Business Intelligence set of tools, is getting smarter
#3Pretty much everything mentioned in this post is standard fare among the major self-service BI vendors now - and if they don't have it it's on their roadmap.
I would say the big advantages of Power BI are 1) Cost: In some cases it's an almost 5:1 cost advantage 2) User Community: Far more important than costs. There's a ton of third-party resources (books, blogs, forums, etc) on how to get the most out of Power BI's underlying technologies: DAX and M. I think you're going to be more likely to find a Power BI meetup in your city than one for another BI vendor.
Re: Power BI, Microsoft’s Business Intelligence set of tools, is getting smarter
#4I've recently switched to start working with Microsoft products, with both this and their Dynamics 365 platform. It really seems like there's a huge opportunity here for guys like me to bring years of experience hacking on UNIX systems into the Microsoft world because there's a lot of "this is how it's done" and legacy systems thinking. Many of the developers I've seen working in this space seem a few years behind, s…
>"It really seems like there's a huge opportunity here for guys like me to bring years of experience hacking on UNIX systems into the Microsoft world because there's a lot of "this is how it's done" and legacy systems thinking."
I wish you luck, but do bear in mind that support considerations are very important in the business world, especially businesses where IT services are in a supporting role to the main business. With that in mind, I'd hazard a guess that XML is one of the least problematic parts of what you're working with.
Re: Power BI, Microsoft’s Business Intelligence set of tools, is getting smarter
#5I've recently switched to start working with Microsoft products, with both this and their Dynamics 365 platform. It really seems like there's a huge opportunity here for guys like me to bring years of experience hacking on UNIX systems into the Microsoft world because there's a lot of "this is how it's done" and legacy systems thinking. Many of the developers I've seen working in this space seem a few years behind, s…
> Many of the developers I've seen working in this space seem a few years behind
Could you be more specific what you're referring to here? As it is developing it seems to me like there is a very high chance of companies ending up with a tangled mess of things, but wondering if you're seeing different issues than me.
Re: Power BI, Microsoft’s Business Intelligence set of tools, is getting smarter
#6I found Power BI's natural language Q & A to be the real killer feature that Tableau, et al currently don't have.
https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/powerbi-se...
It actually works 90% of the time and helps you answer fairly complicated questions about your data set, visualize them and add them to your dashboard.
Re: Power BI, Microsoft’s Business Intelligence set of tools, is getting smarter
#7I was pretty impressed how easy it is to create new custom visuals for Power BI in R.
Re: Power BI, Microsoft’s Business Intelligence set of tools, is getting smarter
#8Pretty much everything mentioned in this post is standard fare among the major self-service BI vendors now - and if they don't have it it's on their roadmap. I would say the big advantages of Power BI are 1) Cost: In some cases it's an almost 5:1 cost advantage 2) User Community: Far more important than costs. There's a ton of third-party resources (books, blogs, forums, etc) on how to get the most out of Power BI's…
I'd say that biggest advantage Power BI has is that its plugged right into the Office 365/Azure world.
Re: Power BI, Microsoft’s Business Intelligence set of tools, is getting smarter
#9I've recently switched to start working with Microsoft products, with both this and their Dynamics 365 platform. It really seems like there's a huge opportunity here for guys like me to bring years of experience hacking on UNIX systems into the Microsoft world because there's a lot of "this is how it's done" and legacy systems thinking. Many of the developers I've seen working in this space seem a few years behind, s…
I'm curious too, what you mean here. Azure is cutting edge, HDinsight is world class. The stuff they are doing with R is great. Even Excel probably does a lot of things you don't realize, do you know it comes with a built-in in-memory columnar DB and a Facebook client now?
Re: Power BI, Microsoft’s Business Intelligence set of tools, is getting smarter
#10I was pretty impressed how easy it is to create new custom visuals for Power BI in R.
The integration with R is awesome. I was amazed to see that you can create a chart with R code - with ggplot for instance - along side "native" power BI charts, and the ggplot graphic responds to filters and other report-level manipulation the same as others. Do other BI products do this?