How to create and manage tables in Power BI
Power BI also allows to create and manage datatable relationships.
Example 1
Consider the following relationship in Power BI desktop.
The “addresses” table is the main Data Table which has a one-to-one relationship with the “student” table. Here “student” table acts as a Lookup table holding all information regarding any student.
The key “student_id” from “addresses” table is linked to the “student” table.
Example 2
Consider another Power BI relationship as shown below. In this case, “student” table is the main Data table and “skill_description” is the lookup table which gives detailed information for any particular skill. ( skillId is the key used for the reference to skill_description table)
Data table: The following shows the main data table “student” with many columns as keys and also have quantitative columns values like “percentage”, “parent_salary” ,”marks”.
student_skill:
Skill description table: The following screenshot helps in understanding lookup tables as this holds information for any skill id as shown below. The “skillid” with value 1 is “SQL”, 2 is “ASP.NET” and so on.
Understanding Data Tables vs. Lookup Tables
Power BI Data Tables are like normal tables like Sales data tables with sales-related columns or information fields. It can have numeric values and quantitative values like total sales, loans taken, salary, and so on. They are also known as fact tables.
In this article, we will learn the basics of data tables further knowing their importance and basic features. It will also help in understanding the difference between Data Tables and Lookup Tables. The article will take you to the process of creating, importing, and managing data. Finally, we’ll show you how to customize and visualize data tables with others.