Tableau vs Power BI - Bar Chart Tutorial and Comparison - sqlbelle

[@yitianwang4233]

From my point of view, Tableau is more intuitive to create visualizations and it does provide better and beautiful charts. However, I think Power BI is more powerful in terms of data preparation due to the integration with Power Query, in my work, I prefer using Tableau Prep or other tools such as Alteryx for this job to help me efficiently work with unformatted data. Please correct me if I am wrong Belle and thanks for sharing this video.

[@sqlbelle]

Thanks Etienne! I think both tools have their advantages. I definitely agree that Tableau creates beautiful, more intuitive visualizations for most, but there are charts for sure that I feel take way more steps (or workarounds) to get them to work. Power BI has improved tremendously over the years. I also think that while Tableau Prep is getting better and better, Power Query is pretty powerful and it becomes more "at home" for people who use other Microsoft products like Excel, SQL Server and Microsoft Reporting Services. I think Power Query is also more accessible - especially since the license change that Tableau introduced a few years ago. It's no longer a tool that some (or many?) users have access to, while Power Query is right there with Excel and Power BI. Where it's also possible, I think having the ETL processes take care of the cleaning would be ideal. Of course this isn't always the case and we don't necessarily have control over our data sources. This is where Power Query comes in handy. I am excited to see how both of these tools further improve in the coming years.

[@yitianwang4233]

@@sqlbelle You are right, both tools have improved overall years and especially I was so glad that Tableau added data model tool a few months ago which made it easier to model data in Tableau.

[@sqlbelle]

Yes Etienne, I agree! The data model is quite powerful and it really makes it much easier and more robust to work in Tableau. It opens up opportunities to working with more data sets without the baggage of the workarounds when we have to join everything!

[@user-re5uv2mm2h]

Hi, if I could filter out anything I want to disregard using Custom SQL Query. Why would I need to still use Tableau Prep? I've only use Tableau Prep to quickly check the dominant data per column but haven't used it for ETL or any other use. Please explain so I would be persuaded to learn new things in Tableau Prep. Thank you!

[@PatrickBateman12420]

@@user-re5uv2mm2h There are many cases where you might need an ETL tool such as Tableau Prep: image imagine you need a calculation based on groups, then pivot, and ungroup. No chance in Tableau Desktop or with Custom SQL. In other words, you can do things with Tableau Prep you only would be able to do in the database.

[@malcorub]

I went from a Power BI/SSRS team to a SAS/Tableau team within the same company. One thing I am not liking about Tableau is the concept of each graph being built in its own Worksheet and then all brought together in a Dashboard, it feels cluttered if that makes sense. I like how in Power BI every graph can be created, formatted and resized in a single worksheet easily. Tableau does have some prettier visuals and I am enjoying learning and comparing to PBI.

[@shokatali2597]

Loved this. Requesting more of this series.

[@sqlbelle]

Thank you Shokat! I will definitely try to add more to this series.

[@vijayarjunwadkar]

Wonderful! I was looking for a comparison between Tableau and Power BI visuals and found this nice video giving a one-to-one comparison and clearing all the doubts so easily! You are great! Thanks a lot! 😊👍

[@sqlbelle]

Thank you Vijay! 😀

[@vijayarjunwadkar]

@@sqlbelle Can we have more videos comparing Tableau and Power BI. It will be interesting and I am sure you will do a great job here!

[@sqlbelle]

@@vijayarjunwadkar thank you, yes I am planning to have more videos comparing Tableau and Power BI :) ... just trying to plan the time at this point, but yes I want to compare more charts and more features :) Thank you for the suggestion and the support!

[@nellier2155]

Love your videos. Such nice way of presenting the material. Great clarity and precise. Looking forward to similar tutorials in powerbi as I do not see great videos like yours for the tool.

[@sqlbelle]

Thank you so much for your kind comment Nellie. I would include more PowerBI tutorials in the future.

[@jingli5141]

Amazing video. Your demo of tableau and power BI really help me to understand these two tools clearly.

[@sqlbelle]

Glad to hear, thank you Jing!

[@sarasong6019]

Love your videos a lot! You really don't need the background music, it is disturbing, without the background noise your voice sounds even better! : )

[@sqlbelle]

Thank you so much for your comment Sara. I'll start creating videos without the background music. I decided to add it because there's a lot of background noise sometimes where I do the recording, but I'll revert back to perhaps just voice :) Appreciate your feedback!

[@virajphadnis]

Very nice comparison and would like to see many more such videos. I had build a pbix containing 10 sheets each having around 10-12 visuals each having drill down to details, still thinking how I could have managed doing this in Tableau. Though both are powerful and have their own advantages but I feel Power BI is more user friendly in terms of learning and development.

[@ni12907]

Hi, was wondering can you make advanced SQL tutorials that works thru practical SQL questions. Also, please do a Data Analyst interview series. Thank you!

[@sqlbelle]

These are great suggestions, thank you Nishi!

[@LV-kj6yj]

Better to share the dataset also in the description in these kind of videos

[@MrStark-zy6cd]

What is better in terms of career, tableau or power bi? Thank you for your great content!!!

[@sqlbelle]

Thanks Mr Stark. I think it depends. Knowing a little bit of both, and specializing, would be good. I know of many companies that have both (esp bigger ones where some departments are more MS centric, and others use other tools). I think it will be good to check out companies you want to work for and see if you can glean the types of tools they use. You can gear your focus towards those. The good thing is, I think no learning is lost regardless of which one you choose to specialize in. The overall skills and concepts are transferable. I think the essence of the work is more important - being able to dive into the data, analyze it, and communicate your findings and recommendations back, and working with your stakeholders.

[@MrStark-zy6cd]

@@sqlbelleThank you so much for your guidance. 😊

[@user-re5uv2mm2h]

Liked and Subscribed! Anyway, our executives preferred Tableau because it can "drill-down" more. Do you have any idea about it? I'm the only one who's using Tableau in our team and most of them are using PowerBI. I'm struggling to show something to the executives that the PowerBI can't do except for better visualization. But I'm so much frustrated because Tableau is so slow since it need to get all the data from our database instead of just getting the data depending on the @filter. Do you have any tips for this? I am currently using a 54m rows table and my Tableau is super slow even if extracted...

[@sqlbelle]

Hello Jers, We typically employ a few strategies. Sometimes it's a combination of (upgraded) hardware, and also data model. We have a few aggregated fact tables so that Tableau won't have to always pull all the records (for example, main executive dashboard that only needs to show yearly info only pulls from yearly snapshot. If they want more details, we can transfer them to dashboards that use more detailed records (ex: monthly). Pre-calculating/aggregating goes a long way for us, and usually this is something we do at the data layer (in our data warehouse). Perhaps it's something your team can explore (if you haven't yet?) Donabel

[@user-re5uv2mm2h]

@@sqlbelle if I make my table aggregated, it would be harder for me to investigate if ever there's an issue in the report. But, it's a nice suggestion maybe I just need to prepare a code for this. Hmmm but sometimes execs want to have a data for hourly since our company is about Calls. Last question, is it really a common issue in Tableau to have a delay in updating the stats in the dashboard? For example if I change the month in the filter from Jan to Feb, it takes 2-4 seconds to update while in PowerBi it takes 1-2 only? It's frustrating in just highlighting and also animation in Tableau is a waste if there's a delay already :(

[@sqlbelle]

Hi Jers, In many of my projects it's definitely a question of tradeoffs. We use periodic snapshot fact tables as lot because of the benefits. It also in some ways makes it easy to investigate issues if everything's happening in a central layer (ie we usually don't have to open up Tableau since many calculations happen in our ETL process). Our underlying data is on SQL Server. For limited hourly data though, would you be able to filter out (at the data source) so that the dashboard only pulls in x number of days (instead of the million records)? For other charts that need to be at the weekly/monthly/yearly - you can point to the snapshots? I think the delay is related to this as well - if the underlying data is less/faster, then the response would usually be faster. Sorry not sure if this is helping, Donabel

[@user-re5uv2mm2h]

@@sqlbelle it's really helping. I've got an idea just now that haven't tried yet. Can I extract a view in SQL? In that way, only one table is needed. For the hourly report, my boss still wants to have the local id (the lowest rank/hierarchy(?) Not sure for the term), so it would only decrease a little but a less is a less so.... I'll try to study about the periodic snaphot table. Would you recommend any vid I could start off in my current problem? For the speed of power and tableau, is powerbi faster or is just that my dashboard could be better that's why it can't keep up in power bi dashboards.

[@sqlbelle]

Hi Jers, That's actually our general strategy - we create views in SQL that we extract into Tableau, so we only really get the fields that we need into Tableau. (There may be other processes that go into simplifying the view, for example, creating the periodic snapshot fact tables). We use Kimball methodology - I have to check if they have videos, but Kimball University has a lot of articles that could be helpful. Here's one specific to the fact table types: www.kimballgroup.com/2008/11/fact-tables/ Power BI really leverages the Microsoft/SQL Server stack. Tableau is more dependent on the different data sources and how you pull them. Just out of curiosity - are you on a Microsoft database? Donabel

[@Nina20157]

Hi. thank you for your videos. your videos are very intuitive and super learning andamazing . i learned tableau very clearly from your videos. can you plz make videos on power Bi tutorial with some sort of real time scenario examples.?i am very clear that I can easily learn from your video only .. :)

[@sqlbelle]

Thank you Amrita, for your suggestion and comment!

[@sanagaribabu7956]

Good explained ..please post more videos ob power bi vs tableau

[@sqlbelle]

Thank you Sanagari

[@rupendrabadde8908]

How to write a calculation and how to understand it ,each and every time I have lot of confused in calculation ?

[@sqlbelle]

Hello Rupendra, I have a video on basic calculations that you may find helpful. kzbin.info/www/bejne/h5rQh4Siaqaij68

[@rupendrabadde8908]

Thank you. but still I have ?

[@arghasarkar4180]

Great Mam and Thank you...😊

[@sqlbelle]

Thank you Argha!

[@rogervandecraen9797]

very clear and nice video, have you also a video explaining the difference in making measures. does tableau has a similar kind of DAX ? kind regards Roger

[@sqlbelle]

Thank you Roger. I don't think there's a straight up equivalence with Tableau, but it would be the calculations esp combo of table calcs and LOD expressions. Here is a playlist that may be helpful? I dont have a video yet with a direct comparison of the two. kzbin.info/aero/PLkZ_g9Y7eszKalPnHxchnp93YjeWgYitS

[@piyushpathak7311]

Mam create a whole playlist of Power Bi PLZZ

[@sqlbelle]

Thank you Piyush! I am planning to create more videos on Power BI in addition to Tableau and SQL Server :) Thank you for your comment and support!

[@ashaarun527]

can you pls do more videos on power BI ?

[@shashanksharma8901]

suggest me where i can understand power bi