Chapter 7: Data Preparation Common Best Practices

In the previous chapter, we dealt with a flat data source, and we prepared the data in the star schema shape by identifying the dimensions and facts. Then we prepared the data to serve the star schema in the data model. In this chapter, we will look at common data preparation best practices that will help to achieve better-performing queries that are well organized and are cheaper to maintain by going through some general techniques and considerations in Power Query to avoid common pitfalls. We will look at query folding and discuss some relevant best practices. We will emphasize the importance of data conversion to avoid potential issues caused by inappropriate data conversions in the data model. We will also discuss some techniques to keep the query sizes optimized. Last but not least, we'll discuss some naming conventions that are essential for code consistency.

In this chapter, we'll discuss the following best practices...