Created by: Paul Pitcher
Creation Date: Aug 16, 2025
Updated Date: Oct 14, 2025

Power BI

Power BI was first released to the general public on 24 July 2015. To put this into perspeictive Tableau was founded in 2003 and the first version of Tableau was released in April 2005.
Microsoft's business analytics platform consist of several tools. Microsoft has a introduction page that is a good place to start. Wiki has a more detailed list under the "Key components" section.

Here are a few of the tools that I want to highlight.
1. Power BI Desktop (Also called: Power BI) this is the main tool that is used for building report. There are also several tools inside of Power BI desktop such as Power Query and M Language
2. Power BI Report Builder = used to creating "paginated reports" (reports that look like they are ready to be printed on paper which I think is stupid). This is rarely used from what i have seen. i don't think its on the PL-300 test
3. "Power BI Service" = website (http://powerbi.com/) where you can publish your power BI reports so that they are viewable by others. You can also edit modify power bi reports from the website.
4. Power BI Mobile app for viewing reports on the go
5. There is also an option to have a "power bi report server" that lets you keep reports on premises instead of publishing to the cloud. For example I have heard of stories where the US government has sensitive data so they want to have a "power bi report server" on prem.