What are the Types of Table Relationships and their Significance in Power BI
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The term relationship describes the links or relationships between two or more tables. Measuring the relationship between imported tables helps you compute outcomes precisely, unveil correct information in your reports, and perform an analysis on multiple tables. You can either create a relationship between tables manually or with the help of “Autodetect” under Manage relationships on the Modelling tab, or you can edit the existing ones.
Types of Relationships
There are different types of relationships available in Power BI: Cardinality (direction), Cross filter direction, and Make this relationship active, of which Power BI Desktop automatically configures other options based on its best prediction, which can vary depending on the data in the columns.
Cardinality
There are three main types of cardinality in table relationships:
- One to One (1:1) — SSR (Single-Single-Relationship). Here, only one value exists in each relational column in both tables.
- One to Many (1:*) — One table’s column has just one instance of a given value, while another table’s column can have several examples of the same value.
- Many to One (*:1) — The most prevalent and default relationship is a many-to-one relationship. This means that a value can only appear once in a column in a single table, which is your lookup table. The value may appear multiple times in the other column.
- Many to Many (*:*) — You can create a many-to-many link between tables using composite models that eliminate the need to have unique data. There are a few advantages to this relationship structure. Like adding new tables just to construct associations, previous solutions are also gone. Power BI gives you a warning when you build an MMR (Many-Many-Relationship).
Cross filter direction
The cross filter direction for each model relationship must be defined. The direction(s) in which filters propagate depends on your choices. The cardinality type influences the cross filter options available.
Single: The filter context is only communicated in one direction of the relationship, never the other.
The orientation of a one-to-many relationship is always from the one-to-many side to the many sides. The most popular is the default direction, which implies filtering options in related tables work on the table where values are aggregated. When you import a Power Pivot data model into Excel 2013 or earlier, all relationships have the same direction.
Both: The filter context is propagated in both directions of the relationship. This is sometimes referred to as a bidirectional cross-filter or a bidirectional connection. Both tables are viewed as a single table for filtering purposes. With a single table surrounded by several lookup tables, Both configurations work nicely.
Make this relationship active
The relationship becomes active and default when it is checked. The dynamic relationship allows Power BI Desktop to automatically build visualizations that include both tables when there are several relationships between two tables.
Between two model tables, only one active filter propagation path is allowed. Additional relationship paths can be introduced, but they must all get marked as inactive.
Only during the evaluation of a model calculation can inactive associations be made active.
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