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JTJT64
New Member

Where is the loop in Power BI?

My company will soon be moving to Power BI and they’re advertising it as a ‘Data Analytics’ solution for ‘Big Data’ and ‘Data Science’ that will pair with our Hadoop/HUE systems.  I’m just not seeing it.  Can someone answer how I would perform a simple downhole calculation across an oilfield asset, something common in the oil and gas industry?  A downhole calculation will require 10-20 input variables, about 50 constants, an iteratively solved value (Excel’s Goalseek), then a series of iterative looping, whereby each loop feeds new values to the next, each with conditional if/then statements.  There are 30+ of these conditionalized loops.  All this to find one value which belongs in a column on a report.  In Excel VBA it’s about a 4 page process.  That column will probably contain a few hundred wellbores (rows).  How can this be done without a series of coded ‘loops’ in a fully functional programming language (ex. VBA, Python, R…)? If not Power BI, is there something with Power BI’s Big Data functionality that would have this capability?

 

Any help would be appreciated.  Suggested readings?  Alternative approaches/products?

 

Thank You

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION
nickchobotar
Skilled Sharer
Skilled Sharer

Hi @JTJT64

 

All this can be build and deployed to the Power BI  web service and DAX and M are your functional programming languages for this. 

 

- Power Apps to collect your variables

- DAX for the logic

- PQ M to deal with the recursion

- and a combination of pushing some of the logic to the source (dim model)

 

The logic appears to be challenging, so it will be very interesting to be a part of this project. If you want to start off with sharing that excel file and putting together requirements and logic I will be more than happy to help. Also, if you want to take this off line shoot me a message.

 

Thanks, Nick -

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5 REPLIES 5
Greg_Deckler
Super User
Super User

@JTJT64- See my blog articles where I believe I am doing something very similar to what you want, only I'm using fractals. But the techniques should be the same:

 

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/fun-graphing-power-bi-part-sqrtpowersqrt82-deckler-microsoft-mvp-

 

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/fun-graphing-power-bi-part-3i-greg-deckler-microsoft-mvp-


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nickchobotar
Skilled Sharer
Skilled Sharer

Hi @JTJT64

 

All this can be build and deployed to the Power BI  web service and DAX and M are your functional programming languages for this. 

 

- Power Apps to collect your variables

- DAX for the logic

- PQ M to deal with the recursion

- and a combination of pushing some of the logic to the source (dim model)

 

The logic appears to be challenging, so it will be very interesting to be a part of this project. If you want to start off with sharing that excel file and putting together requirements and logic I will be more than happy to help. Also, if you want to take this off line shoot me a message.

 

Thanks, Nick -

Thank You for the responses.

 

Looks like I'll need to do a deep dive into Power Query & M to see all the capabilities.

 

Appreciate the offer to help, but we're just getting started.  We've just begun to get data linked from Hadoop to start building the simpler relationship views.  Going to be a while before there's time to tackle these more complicated relations/calculations.  Great to know there's some flexibility possible through M

If you want a jump start on M and recursion, see my article here:

https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Community-Blog/Using-Recursion-to-Solve-Hex-to-Decimal-Conversion/b...

 

Also, R is available as part of Power Query and you can use R in visuals as well via the R Visual.


@ me in replies or I'll lose your thread!!!
Instead of a Kudo, please vote for this idea
Become an expert!: Enterprise DNA
External Tools: MSHGQM
YouTube Channel!: Microsoft Hates Greg
Latest book!:
Mastering Power BI 2nd Edition

DAX is easy, CALCULATE makes DAX hard...
Greg_Deckler
Super User
Super User

DAX does not support recursion. Power Query M language does. You could also probably use R.


@ me in replies or I'll lose your thread!!!
Instead of a Kudo, please vote for this idea
Become an expert!: Enterprise DNA
External Tools: MSHGQM
YouTube Channel!: Microsoft Hates Greg
Latest book!:
Mastering Power BI 2nd Edition

DAX is easy, CALCULATE makes DAX hard...

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