Forum Discussion
Best practices for working with star model?
Hi virgo
I have the same question, but I believe will or rather imagine navigating the application when we have more of a different database with real-time reading mode should be slow and believe it will not be worth it, I will do more I report herein and testing.
virgo - yes, those are the current supported data sources for direct query/live connection (Azure SQL Database and Azure SQL Data Warehouse included)
Anonymous Many others have already chimed in about using direct query or live connection due to the 250 mb size limitation when importing your data into the Desktop. I would look at the level of effort it would take to get your data into a SQL DB, and direct connecting, or skip that and import your data into a Tabular model (or multidimensional) and manage your business layer there. I've had great success, and performance, in large scale implementations using tabular models with Power BI, and it is usually the recommended route I suggest if you have the SQL licensing.
Couple things to note with these approaches: Direct Query - your mesaures and calc columns will exist in PBI Desktop files. With Live Connection to SSAS - your model can be fully built and managed in one location, and all you need to do with Power BI is connect to it.