Direct Query SQL Server Security

[sonocapace]

I've created an on-premises gateway using my Windows credentials. I've created several Power BI reports which pull directly from SQL Server views. The views rely on SQL functions to expose only the data to which a specific logged in user is mapped in the SQL database. These views work perfectly when used as data connections in Excel, but when a user tries to refresh the reports in Power BI online they see only the data to which I myself (the report creator) am mapped. Any suggestions?

[v-qiuyu-msft · Accepted solution]

Hi @sonocapace,

In Power BI data gateway SQL Server data source, all queries to the data source will run using these credentials entered when creating the data source. So when users access the report, those credential are passed to SQL function on SQL side to limit the specific data.

In your scenario, I would suggest you use Row Level Security feature to limit user specific data. you can connect to the SQL Server tables instead of views, which has one column contains different user's User Principal Name (UPN). For example, user1@contoso.microsoft.com.

In desktop, create a role use Username() via Manage Roles like below:

After publish the report to service, go to dataset security, add users under this role. For detail information, please refer to this article: Row-level security (RLS) with Power BI.

Best Regards,
Qiuyun Yu