Tableau and Power BI: A Terminology Guide

Following our introduction to Power BI and its associated tools this week, we frequently encountered various terminologies and functions that differ from what we previously learned in Tableau and Tableau Prep. I've compiled a comparison of the most important terms in the table below.

1. A worksheet in Tableau is a single view containing one visualization, while a report in Power BI allows a collection of visualizations, similar to a Tableau dashboard.

2. Both tools have dashboards, but they work differently. In Tableau, you combine multiple worksheets to make a dashboard. In Power BI, a dashboard is what you get after you publish your report.

5. In Tableau, a field containing qualitative data is termed a dimension, while in Power BI, a similar field is simply called a column, whether it contains qualitative or quantitative data.

6. In Tableau, a field containing quantitative data is called a measure, while in Power BI, a similar column is also referred to as a column. But, Power BI also features calculated columns that are manually created.

7. Level of Detail (LOD) expressions in Tableau enable calculations at various aggregation levels, while Power BI employs the DAX formula language for this purpose.

8. These are the tools used for data preparation and transformation.

10. When you make changes to your data, Tableau Prep shows each change separately as "Changes" in each step, while in Power Query, all your changes are listed together in a list called "Applied Steps".

11. Join types comparison:
- Inner Join vs. Inner Join
- Left Join vs. Left Outer Join
- Right Join vs. Right Outer Join
- Full Outer Join vs. Full Outer Join
- Anti Join vs. Unmatched