Forum Discussion
Should I use Power Query/Power Pivot or "basic" tables and formulas?
IMHO, you need mix of all.
Power Query is ETL (extract, transform, load) tool to pickup data from different sources, transform it and load to data model or/and directly into Excel Table.
Power Pivot is the interface to work with data model close to tabular model Sequel Server Analysis Services, you may use both DAX and MDX.
However, if you never used them initial time investment (and on later steps as well) to start working with them will be more significant than with formulas.
But that all depends on complexity of data and desired solution, I don't mean the size.
SergeiBaklanThank you! You're probably right. I think I'll go with Power Query to extract and clean the necessary data from the original SQL export, and then continue with standard formulas (not Power Pivot).
I'm not sure how familiar you with Power Query, just take into account you may use embedded SQL query, but with this you lost query folding. What's better to use depends on concrete situation.
