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Mistakes to Avoid in a BI Platform Migration

Chris Webb covers five things to consider when migrating your BI platform, using Power BI as an example:

Every report has a data source and getting source data in the right format for your BI platform is a substantial task – so much so, that you might be tempted to put Power BI on top of the data sources you have created for your previous BI platform with no changes. However different BI platforms need their data in different formats. Many BI platforms like their data munged together in one big table, sometimes even with data at different granularities in the same table. Power BI, on the other hand, likes its source data modelled as a star schema (you can find out what a star schema is and why it’s important here). If you don’t model your data as a star schema you may find that you see incorrect values in your reports, that report performance is poor, and that it’s a lot harder to write the DAX calculations that you need.

Four out of the five fit just as well with any other data platform technology.