Create SQL Reports with Power BI

Previously, in this series, I wrote Getting Started with Power BI Desktop.

This article shows how to connect to and get data from a SQL Server data source and create a Report using Power BI Desktop.

Getting Started

Start BI Desktop and click on the Get Data link in the left side bar as you can see in Figure 1.

Figure 1

On the Get Data dialog, you can see a list of available data sources. Select Database in the left bar and select SQL Server Database and click the Connect button.

Figure 2

Now enter the SQL Server name and database (optional) and click the OK button.

Figure 3

Now you can see the list of all available databases. Here you can select your database and select the tables you want to create reports and charts from.

Figure 4

Figure 5

Figure 6

Now you can see the available Visualizations and data fields list. Select how you want to see the data.

Figure 7

I have selected Line Chart and the three columns from the table, Order ID, Shipped Data and Subtotal.

Figure 8

Once you select options, you will see a Subtotal chart added to the screen.

Figure 9

Now, if you hover over the line chart on various areas, you will see a popup with the values.

Figure 10

Summary

In this article, we saw you to connect with a SQL Server data source to get data and generate charts and reports in Power BI.

In my next article, we will see how to connect and generate reports from an Excel data source.