R and Power BI

Milan’s Power BIUserGroup

Introduction

Adriana Santacroce

Avanade

Analyst, Advanced Analytics

PowerBI Service

(cloud/web)

PowerBI Desktop

PowerBI Report Server

(on-premise)

Connect, transform data, create

advance calculations and build

visual reports.

Power Bi Desktop is a on-

premise application to install on

PC which can be used to load,

transform and visualize data.

Import data and get

started with visual,

sharable web

dashboards.

Power Bi Service is

mainly use to share

dashboards and

reports in the web.

Power BI Report Server

enables users access to

data and insights, and

the enterprise reporting

capabilities of SQL

Server Reporting

Services — in a modern,

on-premises solution.

PUBLISH

Power BI is a business analytics solution that lets

you visualize your data and share insights across

your organization, or embed them in your app

or website. Connect to hundreds of data sources

and bring your data to life with live dashboards

and reports

Power BI – Definition and Tools

• It is a powerful statistical programming language

• Creators: Ross Ihaka and Robert Clifford Gentleman (University of Auckland, New

Zealand)

• Released year: 1997

• Must knows:

• R is an implementation of S programming language

• R design and evolution is handled by the R-core group and R foundation

• Purpose: R focuses on better, user friendly data analysis, statistics and graphical

models

• Community: Thriving open source-community with support coming in the form of:

• Mailing lists

• User-contributed documentation updated by enthusiastic volunteers

• Active Stackoverflow members

• Usability: Statistical models can be written with only a few lines.

• Code repositories: CRAN stands for the Comprehensive R Archive Network: it is a

huge repository of R packages (more than 10,000) to which users can easily

contribute. Packages are collections of R functions, data, and compiled code. They

can be installed in R with one line.George Ross Ihaka Robert Clifford Gentleman

What is R ?

Source: https://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/2008/ihaka-pickering/full/0029.jpg

https://www.datacamp.com/community/tutorials/r-or-python-for-data-analysis

Important:

• Only data frames are imported

• For the R scripts to work properly in the Power BI query, the R privacy level needs to

be set as public.

• Automatically exporting your script from your R IDE into Power BI Desktop is not

supported.

When PowerBI is lacking…R enters in action!!! R and Power BI integrate each others. It’s

possible to run R scripts directly in Power BI Desktop report as a visual or as a step in an

import query using the resulting datasets into a Power BI Desktop data model.

Integration – Set up R in Power BI

With Power BI Desktop, you can use your external R IDE (Integrated Development

Environment) to create and refine R scripts, then use those scripts in Power BI.

R and Power BI desktop

Integration – Set up R in Power BI

Source: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/desktop-r-ide

R visuals in Power BI desktop and Power BI Service have a few limitations

PowerBI Desktop* PowerBI Service**

Version of R deployed The one in your pc Revolution R Open 3.2.2.

Packages supported No limitationshttps://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/service-r-packages-support

Data size limitation 150,000 rows 150,000 rows

Calculation time limitation Five minutes 60 seconds

Visuals

R visuals respond to highlighting other visuals, but you cannot click on elements in the R visual in order to cross filter other elements.

Same as PowerBI Desktop

R visuals are refreshed upon data updates, filtering, and highlighting. However, the image itself is not interactive and cannot be the source of cross-filtering.

Same as PowerBI Desktop

R Visuals do not display when using Publish to webR visuals are currently not supported in the DirectQuerymode of Analysis Services

RelationshipsAs with other Power BI Desktop visuals, if data fields from different tables with no defined relationship between them are selected, an error occurs.

Same as PowerBI Desktop

Licence Free licenceR visuals require Power BI Pro licence to see R visuals in REPORT and require no licence (free) to see R visuals in DASHBOARD

R visuals not supported in Power BI Report Server (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/report-server/compare-report-server-service)

* https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/desktop-r-visuals ** https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/service-r-visuals

Known limitations

R and Power BI: DEMO

Fuel economy data from 1999 and 2008 for 38 popular models of car

The dataset contains a subset of the fuel

economy data that the EPA makes available

on http://fueleconomy.gov. It contains only

models which had a new release every year

between 1999 and 2008 - this was used as a

proxy for the popularity of the car.

Source in R: ?ggplot2::mpg

Link: https://community.powerbi.com/t5/R-

Script-Showcase/Using-R-scripts-to-show-5-

different-dimensions-in-a-single-Chart/m-

p/156116

Source: https://pixabay.com/en/car-auto-automobile-vehicle-1245780/

Some useful links

What is R ? R Core Team (2017). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation

for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. URL: http://www.R-project.org/

R news and tutorials: https://www.r-bloggers.com/

https://www.r-statistics.com/tag/stackoverflow/

http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2017/01/cran-10000.html

Advanced analytics with Power BI and R: http://radacad.com/online-book-analytics-with-power-bi-

and-r

R scripts in Power BI: https://docs.microsoft.com/it-it/power-bi/visuals/service-r-visuals

http://community.powerbi.com/t5/R-Script-Showcase/bd-p/RVisuals

R scripts in a query editor: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/desktop-r-in-query-editor

Thank you !