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Foxxon28's avatar
Foxxon28
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8 months ago
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Query Parameter - Different columns between sources results in a failed refresh

Hey! Within our company we want to start using Dev/Test/Production in our Power BI, within their respective workspace. Therefore we now have 3 workspaces with a Deployement Pipeline running betwee...
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  • Poojara_D12's avatar
    Poojara_D12
    8 months ago

    Hi Foxxon28 

    What you’re seeing is expected behavior: in the Power BI Service the dataset refresh is schema-validated, so if a column referenced anywhere in the model (Power Query, relationships, measures, or visuals) does not exist in the current source, the entire refresh fails, unlike Desktop which is more forgiving at design time. Query parameters only swap the connection — they do not abstract schema differences — so Dev/Test/Prod must be structurally identical if you want pipelines to work reliably. The only safe workaround is to standardize the schema by exposing views in each environment that always return the same columns (add NULL or default values for missing columns in Prod), or use Power Query to add missing columns with nulls before loading. If the schemas aren’t aligned, deployment pipelines + parameters will keep breaking in the Service.

     

cengizhanarslan's avatar
cengizhanarslan
Icon for Super User rankSuper User
8 months ago

For semantic model refresh in the Service, your “switched” sources must end up with the same schema (same column names + types for anything that gets loaded into the model). If your PROD source doesn’t have a column that exists in TEST, the refresh will fail because the model metadata still expects that column. For example, if TEST has extra columns, you need to add them as NULL in PROD so both environments return identical columns.

 

As an another alternative you could directly work on PROD in which I assuma you have all the columns here, and then publish it on DEV after changing the server to DEV. Then you can work with a proper CI/CD environment.