---
title: "Power BI"
description: "Power BI is Microsoft's business intelligence suite for connecting to data, modeling it, and building interactive reports and dashboards."
canonical: "https://motherduck.com/glossary/power-bi/"
related:
  - title: "Microsoft Power BI | MotherDuck Docs"
    url: "https://motherduck.com/docs/integrations/bi-tools/powerbi/"
  - title: "DuckLake Architecture Deep Dive"
    url: "https://motherduck.com/blog/ducklake-architecture-deep-dive/"
  - title: "Microsoft Power BI + MotherDuck Integration | DuckDB Analytics"
    url: "https://motherduck.com/ecosystem/power-bi/"
---

# Power BI

> Power BI is Microsoft's business intelligence suite for connecting to data, modeling it, and building interactive reports and dashboards.

## Overview

Power BI is Microsoft's BI product, distributed as a free desktop authoring tool (Power BI Desktop), a cloud service for publishing and sharing reports (Power BI Service), and now integrated into Microsoft Fabric. It's tightly woven into the Microsoft ecosystem — Excel, Azure, Teams, and SharePoint — which makes it a common default choice for organizations already standardized on Microsoft tools.

<glossary-callout guide="guide-to-bi-in-the-agentic-era-full" />

## How it works

Data is imported or connected through **Power Query**, a low-code data-shaping tool built on the M language, then modeled into tables and relationships. Calculated columns and measures are written in **DAX** (Data Analysis Expressions), a formula language purpose-built for aggregations across a relational data model. Reports can run in **Import** mode (data cached in Power BI's in-memory VertiPaq engine for speed) or **DirectQuery** mode (queries pushed live to the source on every interaction).

```dax
Total Revenue = SUM(Orders[OrderTotal])

Revenue LY = CALCULATE(
    [Total Revenue],
    SAMEPERIODLASTYEAR('Date'[Date])
)
```

## Power BI and DuckDB

Power BI doesn't ship a native DuckDB connector, but MotherDuck publishes an open-source **DuckDB Power Query custom connector** that uses the DuckDB ODBC driver under the hood. After installing the DuckDB ODBC driver and the connector's `.mez` file, and enabling custom extensions in Power BI's security settings, Power BI Desktop can connect to a local DuckDB file or, using the `md:` prefix with a MotherDuck token, directly to a MotherDuck cloud database — letting Power BI reports pull from DuckDB-backed pipelines without an intermediate export step.