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Top 50 BI Interview Questions
Business intelligence (BI) refers to the methods and tools that organizations employ to manage and analyze their business information. Reporting, online analytical processing, analytics, dashboard development, data mining, process mining, complex event processing, business performance management, benchmarking, text mining, predictive analytics, and prescriptive analytics are all typical uses of business intelligence technologies.
Large amounts of structured and occasionally unstructured data can be handled by BI systems to aid in the discovery, development, and other creation of new strategic business possibilities. They want to make it possible for these huge data to be easily interpreted. Businesses can gain a competitive edge in the market, long-term stability, and the ability to make strategic decisions by recognizing new opportunities and putting into practice an efficient plan based on insights.
Top 50 BI Interview Questions
Question no 1:- What are the components of the self-service business intelligence solution from Microsoft?
Answer: Microsoft’s Self-Service BI contains two components.
- Self-Service BI components BI Excel Toolkit:- It enables users to input data from various sources, model the data in accordance with report requirements, and create interactive reports.
- Energy BI:- You can distribute the interactive reports and queries you’ve developed with the Excel BI Toolkit utilizing the web solution.
Question no 2:- What does self-service business intelligence entail?
Self-Service Business Intelligence is the answer (SSBI)
Ans:- With the help of SSBI, business users may filter, segment, and analyze their data without having to have a deep understanding of statistical analysis or business intelligence (BI). End-users can now more easily access their data thanks to SSBI.
Question no 3:- What is Power Business Intelligence?
Ans:- A cloud-based system for exchanging data in Power BI. After utilizing Power Query, Power Pivot, and Power View to create reports, you may share your findings with your coworkers. Power BI comes into play in this situation. You can upload Excel workbooks to the cloud with Power BI, which is essentially a feature of SharePoint online, and share them with a specific group of coworkers. Additionally, your coworkers can use filters and slicers to emphasize data in your reports through interaction. Power BI, a straightforward method of sharing your research and insights from the Microsoft cloud, completes them.
Question:-4. How would you characterize Power BI as an efficient remedy?
Ans:- A cloud-based business intelligence solution called PowerBI allows users to analyze and visualize unprocessed data that can be obtained from a variety of data sources. It combines business analytics with data visualization and aids any firm in making data-driven business choices. It is simple to use, and the data has been processed in a way that makes it reliable and understandable. It can be shared among users of the on-cloud and accessible from a variety of platforms. It is a practical solution as a result.
Question 5:- Which are the main parts of Power BI?
Ans: The following are PowerBI’s main building blocks:
Power Question Data transformation is one of the most crucial features of PowerBI. Data modeling that uses DAX (Data Analysis Expression) routines for the calculations is done using Power Pivot.
Question 6:- Which Power BI versions are available?
Ans: There are now three versions of PowerBI.
Anyone who wishes to see their business insights from the data using visuals should use Microsoft PowerBI Free/Desktop.
Question 7:- What is Power BI Desktop?
Ans: You can download and install Power BI Desktop for free on your personal computer.
Question 8:- What do we mean by Power BI services?
Ans:- A cloud-based service, or SaaS, is PowerBI Services (software as a service). It facilitates efficient data connection, analysis, visualization, and sharing of business insights.
Question 9:- What data sources can Power BI connect to?
Ans:- An extensive variety of data sources are available for Power BI, but they can be divided into the following categories:
Files: Excel (.xlsx,.xlxm), Power BI Desktop files (.pbix), and Comma Separated Value files can all be used to import data (.csv).
Q 10:- Where is the data stored in Power BI?
Ans: Primarily, PowerBI uses two repositories to store its data: Azure Blob Storage and Azure SQL Database. Azure Blob Storage typically stores the data that is uploaded by the users. You must enroll yourself in the online coding courses for more concepts on Business intelligence and more.
Q 11:- What are the Building Blocks in Power BI?
Ans: The following are the Building Blocks (or) key components of Power BI:
Visualizations: Visualization is a visual representation of data.
Example: Pie Chart, Line Graph, Side by Side Bar Charts, Graphical Presentation of the source data on top of Geographical Map, Tree Map, etc.
Question 12:- What are datasets in Power BI?
Ans:- Datasets: Dataset is a collection of data that Power BI uses to create its visualizations.
Q:- 13). What is the comprehensive working system of Power BI?
Ans. Power BI’s working system mainly comprises of:-
- Data Importing: The first step is to import the data and convert it into a standard format and store it in a staging area.
- Data Cleaning: After assembling the data, it requires transformation or cleaning to remove unimportant values.
Q:- 14). What are content packs in Power BI?
Ans: Content packs for services are pre-built solutions for popular services as part of the Power BI experience. A subscriber to a supported service can quickly connect to their account from Power BI to see their data through live dashboards and interactive reports that have been pre-built for them.
Q 15:- What is a dashboard?
Ans: A PowerBI dashboard is a canvas that creates a story with templates and visualizations for a better understanding of the data. It is a single-page report and contains the highlights of the data.
Q 16:- What are the available views?
Ans: The views in PowerBI a
Report View: It is the default view that shows the visualization of the data in reports. You can create multiple report pages here with a wide range of templates and visualizations.
Q 17:- What are the available formats?
Ans: Power BI is available in different formats:
- Power BI desktop: You can download and install PowerBI Desktop on your personal computer where you can connect to the data source, transform your data, and analyze and visualize it with templates.
- Power BI services: It is a cloud-based service or SaaS (software as a service). You can connect to data here as well but the modeling is limited.
Q 18:- What are custom visuals in Power BI?
Ans: In PowerBI you can create your own visualizations from the library of custom visualizations. A development project has to be created and then test the visual in the PowerBI service. Once the visualization is customized, it is thoroughly checked and tested before posting. After testing, the visualization is saved in a .pbiviz file format before sharing. But you need to be a PowerBI Pro user in order to make custom visualizations.
21). Why and how would you use a custom visual file?
Ans: A custom visual file is used when none of the pre-existing visuals fit the business needs. Custom visual files are generally created by Developers and can be used in the same way as prepackaged files.
22). What are the various types of users who can use Power BI?
Ans: PowerBI can be used by anyone for their requirements but there is a particular group of users who are more likely to use it:
- Report Consumers: They consume the reports based on the specific information they need
- Report Analyst: Report Analysts need detailed data for their analysis of the reports
- Self-Service Data Analyst: They are more experienced business data users. They have an in-depth understanding of the data to work with.
- Basic Data Analyst: They can build their own datasets and are experienced in PowerBI Service
- Advanced-Data Analyst: They know how to write SQL Queries and have hands-on experience on PowerBI. They have experience in Advanced PowerBI with DAX training and data modeling.
23). What are the critical components of the Power BI toolkit?
Ans: The most important components of PowerBI are:
- Power Query
- Power View
- Power Pivot
- Power Map
- Power Q&A
- Power Desktop
- Power Website
- PowerBI Mobile App.
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24). What is the maximum data limit per client for the free version of Power BI?
Ans: With a Power BI Free license a user can use 10 GB of storage in the cloud for hosting Power BI reports. The maximum size a Power BI report can be used in the cloud is 1GB.
25). Where do you reshape data in Power BI?
Ans: The data can be reshaped in Data Editing of PowerBI.
Q26:- How can you refresh data in PowerBI?
Ans: The data can be refreshed in the Gateway in PowerBI by scheduling refresh.
27). Which is a single-page canvas that uses visualizations to depict a story?
Ans: PowerBI service dashboard is a single-page canvas that uses visualizations to depict a story.
28). Mention some advantages of Power BI?
Ans: Few advantages of using Power BI are :
- PowerBI can input a huge quantity of data
- Information can be visualized using powerful templates and visualizations
- Users get cutting-edge intelligence technologies and powerful algorithms that are updated regularly
- Users can have personalized dashboards which are easy to access and understand
- Users can perform queries on reports using the DAX language
29). List out some drawbacks/limitations of using Power BI.
Ans: Some disadvantages of PowerBI are:
- Complex in nature:
- One major drawback of PowerBI is it is designed in a complex manner. One needs complete knowledge of PowerBI in order to start working with PowerBI.
30). What is DAX?
Ans: To do a basic calculation and data analysis on data in power pivot, we use Data Analysis Expression (DAX). It is a formula language used to compute calculated columns and calculated fields.
31). What are the most common DAX Functions used?
Ans: Below is some of the most commonly used DAX function:
- SUM, MIN, MAX, AVG, COUNTROWS, DISTINCTCOUNT
- IF, AND, OR, SWITCH
- ISBLANK, ISFILTERED, ISCROSSFILTERED
- VALUES, ALL, FILTER, CALCULATE,
- UNION, INTERSECT, EXCEPT, NATURALINNERJOIN, NATURALLEFTEROUTERJOIN,
- SUMMARIZECOLUMNS, ISEMPTY,
- VAR (Variables)
- GEOMEAN, MEDIAN, DATEDIFF
32). What are the three fundamental concepts of DAX?
Ans: Three fundamental concepts of DAX are:
- Syntax: Syntax is the formula that includes the functions. If a Syntax is incorrect, it will result in an error.
- Functions: Functions are arguments with specific orders to perform. It helps to calculate any particular order as required.
- Context: Context is of two types: Row Context and Filter Context. Row Context is used when a formula has a Function that applies a filter to identify a row in a table. Filter Context is used when one or more filters are used to get a value.
33). What are the purpose and benefits of using the DAX function?
Ans: DAX or Data Analysis Expression is a functional language that can create calculated columns and/or measures for smarter calculations to limit the data the dashboard has to fetch and visualize.
34). How is the FILTER function used?
Ans: The FILTER function returns a table with a filter condition applied for each of its source table rows. The FILTER function is rarely used in isolation, it’s generally used as a parameter to other functions such as CALCULATE.
35). What is the CALCULATE function in DAX?
Ans: The CALCULATE function measures the sum of a column from any table and can be modified with Filters.
Syntax:
CALCULATE ( <Expression> [, <Filter> [, <Filter> [, … ] ] ] )
36). What is special or unique about the CALCULATE and CALCULATETABLE functions?
Ans: These are the only functions that allow you to modify the filter context of measures or tables.
37). What is the common table function for grouping data?
Ans: SUMMARIZE():- Main group by function in SSAS.
Recommended practice is to specify tables and groups by columns but not metrics. You can use ADD COLUMNS function.
38). What are some benefits of using Variables in DAX?
Ans: DAX or Data Analysis Expression is a functional language that can create calculated columns and/or measures for smarter calculations to limit the data the dashboard has to fetch and visualize.
39). How would you create trailing X-month metrics via DAX against a non-standard calendar?
Ans: The solution will involve:
- CALCULATE function to control (take over) filter context of measures.
- ALL to remove existing filters on the date dimension.
- FILTER to identify which rows of the date dimension to use.
40). What are the different Excel BI add-ins?
Ans: Below are the most important BI add-in to Excel:
- Power Query: It helps in finding, editing, and loading external data.
- Power Pivot: Its mainly used for data modeling and analysis.
- Power View: It is used to design visual and interactively reports.
- Power Map: It helps to display insights on 3D Map.
41). What is Power Pivot?
Ans: Power Pivot is an add-in for Microsoft Excel 2010 that enables you to import millions of rows of data from multiple data sources into a single Excel workbook.
42). What is Power Pivot Data Model?
Ans: It is a model that is made up of data types, tables, columns, and table relations. These data tables are typically constructed for holding data for a business entity.
43). What is the xVelocity in-memory analytics engine used in Power Pivot?
Ans: The main engine behind power pivot is the xVelocity in-memory analytics engine. It can handle large amounts of data because it stores data in columnar databases and in-memory analytics which results in faster processing of data as it loads all data to RAM memory.
44). What are some of the differences in data modeling between Power BI Desktop and Power Pivot for Excel?
Ans: Here are some of the differences:
- Power BI Desktop supports bi-directional cross-filtering relationships, security, calculated tables, and Direct Query options.
- Power Pivot for Excel has single direction (one to many) relationships, calculated columns only, and supports import mode only. Security roles cannot be defined in Power Pivot for Excel.
45). Can we have more than one active relationship between two tables in data model of power pivot?
Ans: No, we cannot have more than one active relationship between two tables.
46). What is GetData in Power BI?
With “Get Data” in PowerBI, you connect to different data sources to import data for analysis and visualization. You can select from a range of various data sources to import the desired data.
47). What is Power Query?
Ans: Power query is an ETL tool used to shape, clean, and transform data using intuitive interfaces without having to use coding. It helps the user to:
- Import Data from a wide range of sources from files, databases, big data, social media data, etc.
- Join and append data from multiple data sources.
- Shape data as per requirement by removing and adding data.
48). What are the data destinations for Power Queries?
Ans: There are two destinations for output we get from the power query:
- Load to a table in a worksheet.
- Load to the Excel Data Model.
49). What is query folding in Power Query?
Ans: Query folding is when steps defined in Power Query/Query Editor are translated into SQL and executed by the source database rather than the client machine. It’s important for processing performance and scalability, given limited resources on the client machine. Subscribe to the online boot camp coding courses for delving more deeper in the world of code and data science.
50). What are some common Power Query/Editor Transforms?
Ans: Changing Data Types, Filtering Rows, Choosing/Removing Columns, Grouping, Splitting a column into multiple columns, Adding new Columns,etc.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Q:- What is meant by business intelligence?
Ans:- Business intelligence (BI) is a technology-driven process for analyzing data and delivering actionable information that helps executives, managers and workers make informed business decisions.
Q:- What is a business intelligence example?
Ans:- BI software and systems provide options suited to specific business needs. They include comprehensive platforms, data visualization, embedded software applications, location intelligence software, and self-service software built for non-tech users.
Q:- What is the role of business intelligence?
Ans:- Business intelligence, or BI, is a type of software that can harness the power of data within an organization. It offers a better way to sort, compare, and review data in order for companies to make smart decisions.
Q:- Which is the best business intelligence tool?
Ans:- The Best Business Intelligence Tools
- Power BI. Microsoft Power BI is business intelligence software that shows business performance metrics through interactive reports and visualizations.
- Oracle Analytics Cloud.
- MicroStrategy.
- TIBCO Spotfire.
- Qlik Sens
