Power BI is one of the most powerful tools for datavisualization and business intelligence in today's data-driven world. It'scrucial for candidates to prepare well for interviews that focus on Power BI,as it's frequently used across industries. Below, we provide a comprehensivelist of the Top 25 Microsoft Power BI Interview Questions withwell-crafted answers to help you stand out in your next interview.
1. What is Microsoft Power BI?
Answer:
Power BI is a business analytics tool by Microsoft that enables users tovisualize and share insights from their data. It allows for data connectionsfrom multiple sources, creates interactive reports and dashboards, and providesreal-time insights.
2. What are the main components of Power BI?
Answer:
The main components are:
- Power BI Desktop: A development tool for creating reports and data models.
- Power BI Service: An online SaaS platform for sharing and collaborating on reports.
- Power BI Mobile: Allows access to reports and dashboards on mobile devices.
- Power BI Gateway: Enables data transfer between on-premises data sources and Power BI services.
3. What are the different views in Power BI Desktop?
Answer:
Power BI Desktop offers three main views:
- Report View: To create visual reports.
- Data View: To view data tables and relationships.
- Model View: To manage data models and relationships between tables.
4. What is DAX in Power BI?
Answer:
DAX stands for Data Analysis Expressions, a functional language used inPower BI to perform calculations and data analysis. It includes a range offunctions such as SUM, AVERAGE, COUNTROWS, and many more.
5. What is the difference between calculated columns andmeasures in Power BI?
Answer:
- Calculated Columns: Computed during data load and stored in the dataset, appearing in data tables.
- Measures: Calculated at the time of report execution and not stored physically. They are more dynamic and used for aggregations.
6. How does Power BI differ from Tableau?
Answer:
Power BI is integrated deeply into Microsoft’s ecosystem and offers betterintegration with Excel, SharePoint, and Azure. Tableau is more flexible fordata visualization and generally better suited for larger datasets, but PowerBI is more cost-effective.
7. What are Power BI Templates?
Answer:
Templates in Power BI allow users to share a report along with its data model,queries, and structure without including the actual data. The file extension is.PBIT.
8. What is the Power Query Editor?
Answer:
The Power Query Editor allows users to clean, transform, and load data intoPower BI. It includes functionalities like merging, appending queries, andapplying transformations without needing to modify the original data source.
9. Can you explain what a Data Gateway is in Power BI?
Answer:
A Data Gateway is a bridge that allows secure data transfer between on-premisesdata sources and Power BI services in the cloud. It supports both scheduledrefresh and live queries.
10. What are the types of filters in Power BI?
Answer:
Power BI supports three types of filters:
- Visual-level Filters: Apply to specific visualizations.
- Page-level Filters: Apply to an entire page.
- Report-level Filters: Apply to the entire report across multiple pages.
11. What is a slicer in Power BI?
Answer:
A slicer is a visual filter element that allows users to segment and filterdata in reports interactively. It is commonly used for filtering categories,dates, and other data fields.
12. Explain the difference between a dashboard and areport in Power BI.
Answer:
- Dashboard: A single-page collection of visuals, primarily used for quick insights.
- Report: Multi-page with detailed visualizations and allows for in-depth data analysis.
13. What are content packs in Power BI?
Answer:
Content packs are pre-built dashboards, datasets, and reports that users canshare across their organization. There are both Service Content Packs(provided by Power BI) and Custom Content Packs (created by users).
14. How can you refresh data in Power BI?
Answer:
Data in Power BI can be refreshed manually or automatically using scheduledrefresh. For on-premises data sources, a Data Gateway is required for real-timeor scheduled updates.
15. What is Power BI Pro?
Answer:
Power BI Pro is the full version of Power BI, which includes collaboration,sharing, and ad-hoc analysis capabilities. Unlike the free version, it allowsusers to share reports and dashboards with others and connect to various datasources.
16. What is Power BI Premium?
Answer:
Power BI Premium offers dedicated cloud capacity and supports large datasets,faster query performance, and on-premises reporting with Power BI ReportServer.
17. What is row-level security in Power BI?
Answer:
Row-Level Security (RLS) restricts data access for certain users based on theirroles. It can be implemented using DAX expressions to create security filters.
18. What are KPIs in Power BI?
Answer:
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are visual representations that track theperformance of certain metrics against set targets. KPIs are designed to give aquick summary of business performance.
19. How does Power BI integrate with Azure?
Answer:
Power BI integrates seamlessly with Azure services like Azure SQL Database,Azure Data Lake, and Azure Machine Learning, enabling advancedanalytics and large-scale data storage capabilities.
20. What is Power BI Embedded?
Answer:
Power BI Embedded allows developers to embed Power BI dashboards and reportsinto web or mobile applications, providing business intelligence featuresdirectly to app users.
21. How can you collaborate on Power BI reports?
Answer:
Power BI allows collaboration through workspaces where users can share reports,dashboards, and datasets with team members, enabling them to co-create andanalyze data together.
22. What are Drillthrough and Drilldown features in PowerBI?
Answer:
- Drillthrough: Allows users to navigate from one report page to another, typically to get detailed information on a specific item.
- Drilldown: Allows users to explore hierarchical data by zooming into more detailed levels within a visual.
23. What is Incremental Refresh in Power BI?
Answer:
Incremental refresh enables refreshing only the new or updated data,significantly improving refresh times and performance for large datasets.
24. What is a Common Data Service (CDS)?
Answer:
The Common Data Service (CDS) is a secure database hosted by Microsoft to storeand manage data used by business applications, which can be easily integratedwith Power BI for data analysis.
25. How do you handle performance issues in Power BI?
Answer:
To optimize performance in Power BI, you can:
- Use DirectQuery mode instead of Import mode for large datasets.
- Reduce data model complexity.
- Use DAX optimization techniques.
- Implement data aggregations and indexing.
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