Client Connection to Oracle datasource using PowerBI Desktop

[mbrunato]

Hi All,

We are new to PowerBI and are in the investigation/discovery phase of setting up an on-prem gateway to provide users with access to an Oracle on-prem datasource.

We have successfully configured and tested the Oracle datasource via the PowerBI web admin interface, but are had some questions that we didnt feel were made clear in the documentation (or we have been misinterpreting the documentation). The questions are:

1. Is an Oracle client required on both the On-Prem Gateway and the PowerBI Desktop machine? (We were under the impression the Gateway would handle the database connection on behalf of the client using PowerBI Desktop)

2. As a test I had installed the Oracle client on my local pc running PowerBI Desktop and have successfully connected to the Oracle database using a tnsnames.ora reference, but am asked for credentials (it dosent work any other way). How can I confirm whether the Gateway is working or not in this scenario as I suspect it is my PowerBI Desktop client directly communicating with the Oracle database in this instance
3. As a PowerBI Desktop business user, is it true that I must align the server name (i.e. in this instance the tnsnames.ora entry) of PowerBI Desktop against the On-Prem Gateway. If this is necessary it seems very counter intuitive that I must expose a business user to a database configuration detail that we have already set up on the Gateway. Shouldnt they just be able to browse datasets that are exposed to them (as configured on the Gateway) according to their relevant user permissions?

Any assistance much appreciated.

Regards,

Marco

[Anonymous]

Hi @mbrunato ,

1. Yes, an Oracle client required on both the On-Prem Gateway and the Power BI Desktop machine.

2. I think you have some misunderstandings about Gateway.The gateway acts as a bridge between on-premises data(Oracle) and Microsoft cloud services(Power BI Service). There's no need to use Gateway between Power BI Desktop and Oracle datebase.

Please refer to the documents below.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/desktop-connect-oracle-database.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/service-gateway-onprem.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/service-gateway-onprem-manage-oracle.

3. I'm not sure what you mean "align the server name (i.e. in this instance the tnsnames.ora entry) of PowerBI Desktop against the On-Prem Gateway". If someone are using Power BI Desktop to connect Oracle database, surely they need database IP address and instance as well as their credentials.

Best Regards,

Jay

Community Support Team _ Jay Wang

If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

[mbrunato]

Thanks for the reply.

We have definitely made some false assumptions around the PowerBI development workflow in our small amount of time playing around with the tool and gateway, so it is good to get some clarification on the workflow that the product requires.

We now will need to navigate through how we manage and implement security against our corporate databases and data for individual PowerBI users, rather than our false assumption this could be handled at the PowerBI application layer via the gateway and pre-configured datasource connections. We may need to manage this access at the database layer instead.

In response to your note around the question 3, I do feel it is a missed opportunity on Microsoft's part that datasources must be specified both at the gateway level and desktop client app level (presuming the use of a gateway), as this couldve greatly simplified access to corporate datasources by users, maybe this could be an enhancement in the future.

Thanks again.

Marco