Power BI Creates Left Joins By Default

Microsoft Power BI is a great tool to visualize data quickly and create management dashboards.
We can load data from almost any data source, and create relationships between different tables, just like in a traditional RDBMS (Relational Database).

Join appear as Equal Joins in Power BI.

This means that when we join 2 or more tables, with one table being the dimension table, and the other the Fact table, then the dimension filters the fact table records that match the criteria (which can come from a Dimension Table, Page filter, Report filter, or through the interactions between the different visualizations)

So a Matrix report or a Chart in Power BI will only show values from the Transaction table where the row from the dimension matches.

  • If we want to see all categories from the Product table, we can just select a category.
  • This will display all distinct categories, irrespective of whether there were any sales for these product categories or not.
  • However, as soon as we bring in the Sales Amount from the Sales Fact table, it filters down the sales amount for each category and then summarizes it.
  • This means that only the categories where there were sales will be displayed.
  • And the categories where there are no sales will be ignored and hidden.

But by tweaking the Category to display Values With No Data, we can see all categories, with or without corresponding sales.

See the step by step video to learn how to enable the Show Values With No Data option in Power BI.

I hope you like the tip. Do like it, and subscribe to the ExcelChamp’s YouTube Channel for more PowerBI Tips like this.

Thanks,
Vinai

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