Using Power BI to Gain Insight Into your MongoDB Data

Seth Payne

#Technical#BI

We are happy to announce updates to the MongoDB Connector for Business Intelligence for use with Microsoft’s Power BI Desktop. Now, it is simpler than ever for Power BI users to access data stored in MongoDB and use Power BI’s powerful analytical and visualization tools to gain insights into the data, and then effectively share these insights with colleagues.

Within just a few minutes, you can expose MongoDB data directly to Power BI to begin creating meaningful charts, dashboards, and reports.

MongoDB as a Data Platform for Business Intelligence

As both MongoDB’s popularity and adoption continue to rapidly grow, organizations are choosing MongoDB as the data platform that supports a variety of applications where tabular, or relational, database systems had been used historically. MongoDB’s document data model presents the best way to work with data for business critical applications, while distributed systems design allows users to intelligently put data where they want it, and enable the freedom to run anywhere - on premise or in the cloud.

But data platform environments are rarely, if ever, homogenous. And, given both the longevity and large install base of enterprise RDBMS, it is common for MongoDB to be part of a larger ecosystem that includes a variety of data sources, many of which are tabular in nature. Because of the need to manage data from multiple systems, administrators are looking for ways to expose all their data to their non-technical business users in a consistent and friendly way, no matter where that data is physically stored.

The MongoDB BI Connector enables Power BI users to easily query, analyze and visualize data stored in MongoDB in the same manner as with other Power BI data sources. No knowledge of MongoDB or the MongoDB Query Language (MQL) required!

Exposing MongoDB Data To Power BI Desktop

One of the benefits of using MongoDB as a platform for BI, is that it eliminates the need for complex ETL operations. BI data workloads can be isolated; separating operational workloads from analytics on separate replica nodes, all operating as a part of the same cluster. The data can also be exposed directly to end users without the need to modify and transfer data before it becomes available to analysts.

Power BI can import MongoDB data through a direct connection to the MongoDB BI Connector or, via ODBC. Once a data connection has been defined, simply select the data you want to work with and import it.

After the import is complete, you can begin working with the data in Power BI Desktop as you would with any data source. If you need to refresh your data, you can easily do so at any time.

Data that resides right in your app is a gold mine when it comes to understanding your customers, but who has time to wait for nightly ETL workflows? With the MongoDB Connector for BI you can take control of your data and get to insights faster. See just how quickly you can discover something!