Applied Microsoft Power BI (2nd Edition): Bring your data to life! 2nd Edition

As a fellow author in the Microsoft BI space, I recognize that Teo has a gift for explaining concepts in a simple yet relevant and meaningful fashion. His books are where I have typically gone, and I sent my students, to learn advanced programming techniques with Reporting Services and other Microsoft BI products. This book is different, though. It covers all the basics very thoroughly (from Get Data and simple visualizations), and then moves on to cover advanced features like streaming datasets, M2M modeling, parent-child hierarchies, Azure Machine Learning, report embedding, API programming and custom visual development. For a product as broad and comprehensive as Power BI, this is an excellent reference for both the beginner and the expert practitioner. I've already bought the eBook and now I'll pickup a paper copy for my reference library.

There are good books in the market that cover Microsoft Power BI but there is a real and distinctive benefit to starting with this one. The scope of Power BI makes for islands of information about the product such as DAX, Power Query, Visualizations, Data Analyst, Developer, Business User etc.This book covers all the bases and does so in a way that is informative without being overwhelming. The reader can go through the entire book and get a good sense of the breadth and depth of Power BI. As a result, you can form an appreciation of the capability available with Power BI without being drowned by a particular topic. At the same time there are guided exercises that let you explore Power BI and leave you very well informed, fully capable of using Power BI and yet eager for more.Power BI is an ever evolving set of tools but I’m sure this book will be on your desk for quite a while into the future.

I'm impressed about the breadth of the topics covered by Teo Lachev in this book, I've just took a quick look at every chapter, and Teo covered all the topics at least at the point where you can start doing something (and in some chapter also more than just an intro). Considering the speed of Power BI releases and the effort required in writing a book, I know the huge effort behind this. My kudos to this book!

Update: 06/25/2019 - I ended up buying the e-book version of this title to get around the paper version issues I cited below. The topics covered in this book are unmatched in quality and breadth of coverage by any other title on the market. In addition, the author stands behind his work and acts on reader's feedback (see comments). I have updated my review to 5-stars as this is a first-class book on the subject.This book has detailed and very useful content, but is very difficult to read due to the poor quality of ink and paper used in printing. Text is faded and sample screens are too small to read. This appears to be an increasingly common problem with computer books these days. I may return and get a digital version instead.

This book was not clear and riddled with typos. Because PowerBI is new and this is really the only book on the topic, I would have liked a clear, bulleted list of what it can do; instead, comments on functionality were sprinkled throughout the book. Also, because the product is so new, some of what he covered was severely limited and only in preview, not widely released (not his fault). However, the overview of the components was nice, and I liked the division into sections for different types of users.

In the last half of 2015 Microsoft's business intelligence offering really started to consolidate nicely around Power BI - but what exactly is Power BI? This book does a really good job of summarizing all of the high level pieces and explaining the important details.FIRST, Teo's book does a really nice job of outlining all of the different Power BI pieces so you can see how they fit together. You could get all of the same information from combing through hundreds of blog posts from Microsoft over the past 12 months - but to have it all in one place is very helpful. SECOND, the book isn't just a broad survey of PowerBI, there are many chapters that go into the details of each piece of the Power BI service with the goal of getting you started building something right now - whether a data model in Power Pivot, an ETL job in Power Query, or a dashboard in PowerBI.com. If you're wondering how to get started building solutions in PowerBI then this is also really helpful. Even some decently complex/new topics are discussed in good detail -- for example, implementing Azure ML models, using the Power BI API, & developing custom visualizations.

Got my copy today and very impressed, not only does it cover all the latest PowerBI technologies...it also explains how to model and transform the data with working examples. Even someone who has been testing this technology out for months will stand to learn a few things they didn't know from this book (I did). I'd suggest it be on anyone's desk from the casual user to the more advanced developer...it has topics for everyone in between as well. Hoping for future books or articles that dive deeper into some of the material, but that should be expected from such a breadth of technology.

Excellent book. Teo is a terrific technical writer (and an excellent speaker if you ever get the chance to see him). You can enjoy a sneak peek of Chapter 1 from his prologika site. The blog on that site is very good. If you want to stay up-to-date with Microsoft's Business Intelligence products (and future direction) and you cannot attend the Atlanta Microsoft BI User Group's monthly meetings then this book is a perfect place to start.

Alla data di questa recensione, chi volesse capire bene tutto il mondo Power BI - e capire bene, di conseguenza, se può essere utile alle proprie esigenze - dovrebbe affrontare un percorso di ricerca informazioni piuttosto complesso e diversificato.Questo libro di Teo Lachev spiega molto bene cosa si fa o non si fa con i vari componenti Power BI, ed è molto ben suddiviso in quattro parti dedicate a "Business Users", "Data Analysts", "Pros" e "Developers" (indipendentemente dalla categoria in cui si pensa di rientrare, è bene leggerle tutte e quattro).Trasversalmente alle varie parti si affronta Power Bi nelle varianti "Service", "Mobile" e "Desktop".Non è e non può essere un libro esaustivo sull'argomento, ma ritengo che una panoramica generale di questo tipo aiuti molto.In meno di 300 pagine, anche solo per i primi due tipi di utenti, non si può sviscerare tutto ciò che è possibile fare perché, in fondo, stiamo parlando di Power Pivot + Power Query + Power View integrati e slegati da Excel, e solo Power Pivot e Power Query da soli meritano molto più di 300 pagine per un utilizzo ai massimi livelli.Però da qualche parte bisogna cominciare per capire Power BI, e questo libro è il punto giusto.L'unico rischio può essere un "parziale invecchiamento precoce" perché gli aggiornamenti di questa tecnologia sono continui ma, come per le automobili, se si aspetta sempre il modello che deve uscire, alla fine si viaggia a piedi con tutti gli altri che ti sfrecciano accanto.

Excellent seller and book

An excellent book to introduce un Power BI!

NO issues. Book arrived as advertised.

I think it is an useful book ,,,It is difficult to find something about new POWER BII suggest and i found very useful also exercices ...Regards

Timely, insightful, practical and easy to use.