Data Abstraction across SQL tables

[ternst]

I am new to Power BI and have been playing with it a lot.  I have experience with other BI tools like Tableau, Grafana, INetSoft, etc.

I have an application with many SQL tables.  The problem is that I have users that would get lost trying to navigate through all of these tables.  In most other BI tools, there is a way to create a virtual table (think of it like a SQL view) based on the user and/or use cases.  Is there a way to do that in Power BI? 

Thanks,  ternst  

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Hi @ternst ,

Power BI Desktop is a data development tool that does not restrict data during development (except for credentials to connect to the data source).

For end users, we can secure data through row-level security and setting workspace roles.

Row-level security (RLS) with Power BI - Power BI | Microsoft Learn

Roles in workspaces in Power BI - Power BI | Microsoft Learn

Best Regards,

Jay

[amitchandak]

@ternst , Not sure of the exact need. You can write SQL in Advance connection option

[ternst]

Let me explain further.  I want to allow users to create visuals using data that may be represented from many different tables.  But I don't want for them to have to figure out how do things like using UUIDs as keys to other tables, etc.  I want to hide that from them.  So, what I would like is to create something like a single virtual table layer in Power BI that these users can create dashboards from.  Also, this virtual table would only have the data needed by these users and use cases.  And, in the background, Power BI does the hard work of determining the connections between the tables.  Does that make sense?