Chris Webb Books, Power BI, Power Query April 21, 2024April 21, 2024

2 Minutes

It’s time for another short post on the free books that various authors have been kind enough to send me over the last few months. Full disclosure: these aren’t reviews as such, they’re more like free publicity in return for the free books, and I don’t pretend to be unbiased; also the Amazon UK links have a affiliate code in that gives me a kickback if you buy any of these books.

Deciphering Data Architectures, James Serra

I’ll be honest, I’ve had this book hanging around in my inbox since February and I wasn’t sure what to expect of it, but when I finally got round to reading it I enjoyed it a lot and found it very useful. If you’re looking for clear, concise explanations of all of the jargon and methodologies that are in use in the data industry today then this is the book for you. Do you want to understand the difference between Kimball and Inmon? Get an honest overview of data mesh? Choose between a data lake and a relational data warehouse? It’s all here and more. It’s an opinionated book (which I appreciate) and quite funny in places too. Definitely a book for every junior BI consultant to read and for more senior people to have handy to fill in gaps in their knowledge.

Extending Power BI with Python and R (second edition), Luca Zavarella

I posted about the first edition of this book back in 2021; this new edition has several new chapters about optimising R and Python settings, using Intel’s Math Kernel library for performance and addressing integration challenges. As before this is all fascinating stuff that no-one else in the Power BI world is talking about. I feel like a future third edition covering what will be possible with Power BI and Python in Fabric in 2-3 years will be really cool.

Data Cleaning with Power BI, Gus Frazer

It’s always nice to see authors focusing on a business problem – in this case data cleaning – rather than a technology. If you’re looking for an introductory book on Power Query this certainly does the job but the real value here is the way it looks at how to clean data for Power BI using all of the functionality in Power BI, not just Power Query, as well as tools like Power Automate. It’s also good at telling you what you should be doing with these tools and why. Extra credit is awarded for including a chapter that covers Azure OpenAI and Copilot in Dataflows Gen2.