Power BI Practice: Filter Step is Not Efficient for Importing Data in Power BI, Use SQL WHERE Clauses Instead
Scenario:
You are modeling data by using Microsoft Power BI. Part of the data model is a large Microsoft SQL Server table named Order that has more than 100 million records. During the development process, you need to import a sample of the data from the Order table.
Solution: From Power Query Editor, you import the table and then add a filter step to the query. Does this meet the goal?
Answer: No. Simply adding a filter step in Power Query Editor is not the most efficient way to import a sample of the data. It's better to apply a SQL WHERE clause first to filter the data at the source before importing it into Power Query. This approach reduces the amount of data transferred and processed, improving performance during the development process.