Connecting to Azure Databricks Method Recommendations

[rodneyc8063]

Howdy folks,

My company is dipping its toes into Azure Databricks and of course part of the conversation is how to report on the data with Power BI.

Our ideal flow would have end users developing reports in PBI desktop then eventually publish to service and let viewers consume the data (sounds pretty straight forward so far).

From PBI Desktop I see I can connect to Azure Databricks after providing the server hostname and HTTP path. Now my question comes to the various ways of authenticating as shown below

So with Azure Active Directory thats just using my Microsoft credentials.

->Is it safe to assume the "Basic"-Username/Password is an actual Azure Databricks username password? When signing into Azure Databricks it just pushes me over to use Microsoft Entra ID and theres no place to input a username/password

->I havent used Personal Access Tokens (PAT) before but if I understand correctly we can create a service principal (lets call it service_p1), generate a PAT and then give this out to our end users? So then if I am logged in via the PAT I would essentially be seen as the service principal (service_p1)?

One concern we have is "maintenance" of the report once its been pushed to the power bi service. For example we are concerned with lets say someone develops a report but then leaves for vacation or the company. I am assuming to avoid this scenario we should go for a PAT and service principal? 

Appreciate any input!

[v-xinruzhu-msft · Accepted solution]

Hi @rodneyc8063 

The Microsoft Entra ID are mainly usder for the authentication, so it cannot  input a username/password directly, you can refer to the following picture, the official document also offer the two ways: token and the Microsoft Entra ID, the username and password are not usually used.

And the token method needs you to generate a personal token in your Databrick,  and if you want to use service principle , you can create it , and put the end user to this principle.  you can refer to the following link.  you need to put the token and the pat to the username and password.

Solved: How to use Service Principal to connect PowerBI to... - Databricks Community - 7023

 And based on youre concern , you can use the service principle for authentication.

Best Regards!

Yolo Zhu

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

[rodneyc8063]

Thank you @v-xinruzhu-msft 

I found some additional documentation from Databricks that specifically states that as of July, 2024 they no longer support username/password authentication here

https://docs.databricks.com/en/security/auth/password-deprecation.html#:~:text=from%20BI%20tools%3F-....

So I assume thats why the documentation does not reference this either, it was just a bit confusing since its still an option in the connector 🙂