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Power BI Data Modelling: From Flat Tables to Star Schema Explained

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Data modelling in Power BI involves organizing tables, defining relationships, and establishing rules that govern how data is stored, filtered, and queried. A flat table structure, where all data exists in a single table, leads to significant redundancy, bloated file sizes, and poor performance. The star schema is the industry-recommended design pattern, featuring a central fact table surrounded by descriptive dimension tables. In a retail example, a FactSales table holds transactional data linked via foreign keys to dimension tables like DimDate, DimCustomer, DimProduct, and DimStore. A well-designed data model improves analytics accuracy and simplifies DAX calculations in business intelligence solutions.

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