Microsoft's analytics and reporting service. It reaches data held on-premises through the on-premises data gateway.
Also called BI.
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Terms in this definition
- On-premises data gateway
Connector that lets Power BI, Logic Apps and Power Apps reach data held on-premises. Azure Data Factory does not use it.
Related terms
- A SKU
Bought through Azure, these Power BI Embedded tiers (A1 up to A8) let developers place Power BI content inside their own apps. They host Power BI workloads only, not the rest of Fabric; an A4 offers compute equal to a P1 or an F64.
- Aggregate table
A summarised copy of a fact table at a coarser grain or with fewer dimensions (daily store sales, for instance) that makes frequent queries faster. Power BI semantic models can achieve the same result through user-defined aggregations.
- AI splits
A decomposition tree mode, shown by a light-bulb icon, in which Power BI itself picks the field to expand next, looking for high or low values in absolute or relative terms. It is unavailable in Power BI Report Server, Azure Analysis Services and publish-to-web reports.
- ALM Toolkit
An open-source, no-cost utility for comparing Power BI semantic model schemas. Because it can release just the metadata changes you pick through the XMLA endpoint, a model that's already published keeps both its data and its incremental refresh partitions.
- Analysis Services
VertiPaq, Microsoft's in-memory analytics engine, sits underneath every Power BI semantic model and is likewise available as Azure Analysis Services or SQL Server Analysis Services. Tools connect to it over XMLA, using its client libraries.
- Analytics views
Filtered definitions of Azure Boards data, such as work items, fields and history, that Power BI reports use as their source.
- AppSource
Microsoft's online store for add-ons, including Power BI custom visuals and template apps. Once imported, a visual is added to the Visualizations pane, provided admin settings permit it.
- Azure Analysis Services
Azure service hosting tabular OLAP models for large numbers of Power BI and Excel users; semantic models in Power BI Premium are its modern counterpart.