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rlogin
New Member

Best way to structure data, tabular or matrix?

I hope this isn't a dumb question, but as a new Power BI user I've been struggling with the best way to structure my data? Namely is it better to store things in a more tabular or matrix format. For example if I want to do analysis on a series of stocks, lets say Microsoft and Apple. Is it better to structure data such that:

 

Tabular:

Date, Return, Stock

1/1,  10%, Microsoft

1/2,  -5%, Microsoft

1/1,  3%, Apple

1/2,  -7%, Apple

 

or 

 

Matrix:

Date, Microsoft Return, Apple Return

1/1, 10%, 3%

1/2. -5%, -7%

 

I know this is quite generic and probably matters a lot on the use case/scalability issues, but I wasn't sure if one of these was generally better. I imagine a compromise would be to store the origin data in a tabular sql table and when importing it into power bi to create several queries filtering the original data set and then linking together.

 

Hopefully I'm not completly ignorant on this and the question makes sense! Thanks.

2 ACCEPTED SOLUTIONS
Nathaniel_C
Super User
Super User

Hi @rlogin ,

Tables are the way to go. 

A couple of books will be helpful if you are starting out. M is for (Data) Monkey and Supercharge Power BI, can't recommend them enough!
Let me know if you have any questions.

If this solves your issues, please mark it as the solution, so that others can find it easily. Kudos are nice too.
Nathaniel





Did I answer your question? Mark my post as a solution!

Proud to be a Super User!




View solution in original post

v-lid-msft
Community Support
Community Support

Hi @rlogin ,

 

In most case , tabular should be more useful when store data, such as you have many stocks and many time node one day, but each time node contain one stocks data, the matrix will be very large, and if you want to add one stock, matrix need to add one more column, but tabular does not to modify the data struction.

 

Best regards,

Community Support Team _ Dong Li
If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

Community Support Team _ Dong Li
If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

View solution in original post

2 REPLIES 2
v-lid-msft
Community Support
Community Support

Hi @rlogin ,

 

In most case , tabular should be more useful when store data, such as you have many stocks and many time node one day, but each time node contain one stocks data, the matrix will be very large, and if you want to add one stock, matrix need to add one more column, but tabular does not to modify the data struction.

 

Best regards,

Community Support Team _ Dong Li
If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

Community Support Team _ Dong Li
If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.
Nathaniel_C
Super User
Super User

Hi @rlogin ,

Tables are the way to go. 

A couple of books will be helpful if you are starting out. M is for (Data) Monkey and Supercharge Power BI, can't recommend them enough!
Let me know if you have any questions.

If this solves your issues, please mark it as the solution, so that others can find it easily. Kudos are nice too.
Nathaniel





Did I answer your question? Mark my post as a solution!

Proud to be a Super User!




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