You’ve built your first Power BI reports, but now you're facing performance issues, overly complex DAX formulas, or confusion about the model view. Sound familiar? Whether you’re struggling with slow reports, puzzling relationships, or just want to understand how to build clean, scalable data models, this hands-on, full-day workshop is for you.

We’ll start from the ground up, establishing a strong foundation in data modeling concepts before exploring how they apply in Power BI. Step-by-step, you’ll gain practical insights, work through real-world scenarios, and build the confidence to model data efficiently and effectively.

Module 1: Data Modeling 101 – Core Concepts

• Understanding tables, primary keys, and foreign keys
• Overview of normalization (1NF, 2NF, 3NF), and when to use it
• Introduction to dimensional modeling: Star vs. Snowflake schemas
• Kimball vs. Inmon vs. Data Vault methodologies
• Why star schema is the backbone of a semantic model

Module 2: Modeling Options in Power BI

• Managing relationships: single vs. bi-directional filtering, cardinality
• Choosing the right cross-filter direction
• Performance implications of different model designs
• Data preparation using Power Query (M)
• Creating explicit measures with DAX

Module 3: Handling Special Dimensions

• Designing robust date and time tables
• Role-playing dimensions (e.g., Order Date vs. Ship Date)
• Working with hierarchies (e.g., geography, product categories)
• Tips for building user-friendly dimension tables
• Tips for optimizing the database for analytical querying

Pre-requisites

For the hands-on exercises, the attendees should bring their own laptops with the latest version of Power BI Desktop (at least not older than three months) installed. The latest versions of Tabular Editor (either version 2 or 3), and DAX Studio, are of advantage, but not mandatory.

Please, download and extract in advance the materials from the following locations:

• AdventureWorksDW_CSV.zip
• DAX
• https://github.com/MEhrenmueller/DataModeling
• Download Power BI from Microsoft Download Center
• Optionally, download Tabular Editor V2 from GitHub Releases
• Optionally, download DAX Studio from DAX Studio Downloads

Speaker

Markus Ehrenmüller-Jensen is the founder of Savory Data, with a career spanning project leadership, data engineering, and business intelligence architecture since 1994. He holds degrees in software engineering and business education and serves as a professor of databases and project engineering at HTL Leonding, a technical college. He is also certified in PL-300 (Power BI), DP-203 (Data Engineering) and DP-600 (Power BI and Azure Data Services).

Markus actively contributes to the global data community, speaking regularly at international conferences such as SQL Bits in London, Power BI Next Step in Copenhagen, Data Saturdays throughout Europe, and SQL Days. He co-founded SQL PASS Austria in 2013 and the Power Platform User Group Austria in 2016; both organizations merged in 2021 to form Data Community Austria. Since 2014, he has organized Data Community Austria Day in Vienna, fostering knowledge sharing among data professionals. In recognition of his technical leadership and community involvement, Markus has been honored as a Microsoft Data Platform Most Valuable Professional (MVP) since 2017.

In addition to his speaking engagements, Markus contributes articles to reputable journals and has authored the book Data Modeling with Microsoft Power BI, published in June 2024.

LinkedIn profile

Registration fee

• Regular price: 250€ / person + VAT
• Early bird price: 200€ / person + VAT (for registrations until 5 November 2025)