This is the type of BI or reports that users will work upon themselves. In this scenario, they use Power BI for desktop to connect to the data sources they want to, whether they are in the data warehouse or anywhere else on the cloud, such as Twitter feeds, data lakes, Spark, and so on.

Most of these sources require that users import data in the Power BI data model to their local machine. If the data source contains a large amount of data, this can consume a lot of resources. But in this mode, data can be altered, in the sense that the source data can be merged or transformed. No live connection is needed to connect to the data as it is imported to Power BI's underlying model. This model is meant to allow users to explore their data and modify it to suit their needs better. They have almost complete control over it.

If the data source is an SQL Server relational database or SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS), a direct connection can be established to it without importing the data to their local machine. In this mode, not much transformation can be done on the source data. This mode is meant to consume the data only. If it has to be altered, it should be done at the source via an ETL for a relational database connection or DAX in the cube.

Self-service BI is used at first as users might not know precisely what has to be done. Or they might have an ad hoc request and they need some freedom to analyze the data in a different way compared to the data warehouse.

Power BI for desktop is available via the Windows 10 store or at the following URL: https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/desktop/. To do the exercises in this chapter, you must download and install this version. At the end of the installation process, you'll be asked to create or sign in with an existing a Power BI account. This account is needed to deploy the reports to Power BI on the cloud. If you don't have Power BI account, you can create one for free. We'll explain this in the section that covers Power BI service on the cloud.