So before we get started into creating our own Power BI solution, okay, I wanted to go through with you in detail first on the individual components. So let's start off with Power Query. So for park for it's a data transformation, right that we use to load the data as a starting point, and then perform our transformations to make it into something useful for us. So Power BI can actually be downloaded as an add in for Microsoft Excel, or it can be used as part of the discipline, the Power BI Desktop. Okay, so there's really a lot of data sources that it covers. So if we select Get date over here, you can see the most common ones over here, Microsoft Excel SQL Server websites, right, but to have a better view, so let me just click this.
There's a lot of data sources you'll be surprised so even here, right, if we go to File, you'll see Excel workbooks, you can get it even from multiple worksheets. text files or comma delimited. csv files, we have XML JSON folders. So which means if you have a folder of files, then you can grab data from all of those files in just one go. You have SharePoint, SQL access, or echo DB to MySQL, Sybase, there's just a whole lot of databases in here. Okay, let me just jump over Power BI data sets, Windows Azure.
So if you have data in the cloud, you can even grab it as well. Online Services, SharePoint, Microsoft Exchange, right? And dynamics. Over here we have Salesforce, Google Analytics, right, Facebook, GitHub, even MailChimp. So there's just a whole lot. And the cool thing with Power BI Desktop is it gets updated fairly frequently.
So you would count on the number of data sources to increase even more even stripes. You Here, right? If you do payments, if you have QuickBooks, then you can just grab the data in here and create cool visualizations out of it. Okay, this is one of my favorites actually getting data straight from websites from live data in websites, right? So there's just a whole lot in here that you can play around with getting data with Power Query. Okay, so the user interface, if we jump over here to our power query editor window, right, don't worry.
I'll show you how we can do this later. But let's just go over here, right? There's a whole lot of operations that you could do in Power Query, mainly transformations. So it allows you to add columns. So if you just go here, right, there's a lot of adding columns in here. It allows you to change data types.
If you go to transform, for example, it can let you change the data type to a different one right over here. It allows transformations numbers dates and time, right Tech's, if you want to split a column, if you want to extract data out of it, extract the first few characters, if you want to pivot and pivot columns, if you want to move them replace. So there's a lot of transformation that you could do in here, right, even transposing, right. So that's the cool thing with Power Query. And there's just a whole lot that you can play around with it. And then what happens after you do the transformations is all the steps are listed out in query settings so that you can have a quick overview on what has happened so far.
And you can even modify them if you don't, like if you're not happy with specific steps in here, and you can even change them midway, okay, as you see fit, and then the query are listed on the left side. Okay, on, let's say you load the data for sales and then for salesperson so that results in two separate queries. And once you're happy with the result set, once you close it and load It will go into Excel or the Power Pivot model, okay, so it gets loaded there. One thing that I want to take note of is Power Query also uses a powerful formula language. This is called M. So M is much more powerful than the user interface built for it. So which means M has a lot more functions than you can see over here, right.
So if you're really overwhelmed, or if you're already amazed with how much you can do from this interface, M has a lot more to offer. Okay? There are a lot more functionalities in M that cannot be access in here. You can only access it through the code of app. So that's pretty much for Power Query.