Jun 28

Jun 28 Visualize Power BI Dependencies with Tabular Editor and Mermaid

Kurt Buhler

Data Modelling, Data Visualization

GENERATE A DEPENDENCY FLOWCHART

*A method with Tabular Editor*
*to make*
*mermaid flowchart syntax*
*for model object dependencies*
A measure dependency flowchart generated from Mermaid syntax created by a Tabular Editor 3 macro.

A Goblin Warning
I do not maintain this script. You will have to adapt it for your model and scenario. If you aren't familiar with C# or comfortable with scripting, I do encourage you to try to use LLMs to make this easier.

WHAT IS MERMAID & WHY IS IT USEFUL?

Visuals help us better interpret information and understand concepts.
This isn’t true only for complex information, either. Even simple concepts are better understood a good diagram, flowchart or graph. This is why data visualization is so powerful; as humans, we are wired to more effectively process visual information. It takes a mere 13 ms to process visual information vs. 200 ms for words,



and we learn more effectively when diagrams are presented together with text. The problem is that making diagrams and charts takes a lot of time - particularly for technical documentation. Often we need to either manually create such diagrams in programs like PowerPoint or Figma, or know complex methods to generate them. There must be an easier way, right? Well, there is.

Mermaid.js makes this trivial. Mermaid is a javascript tool for generating diagrams with a simple, markdown-like syntax. It’s trivial to learn and use, albeit limited in customisation. If you’re familiar with Azure DevOps Wikis, chances are you’ve come across the ‘Mermaid Diagrams’ button. These diagrams can be created with the mermaid plugins - like the one in DevOps or the mermaid.ink service in Jupyter notebooks - but also using a javascript API, CLI and a
web-authoring interface, mermaid.live
. Basically, you can make mermaid diagrams in many ways, to integrate them with whatever you’re doing.

📌 Visualize Power BI Dependencies with Tabular Editor and Mermaid (Jun)
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