Direct Query with SQL Server.

[Anonymous]

My company has uploaded a number of sql databases in power bi. It updates overnight everyday. I'm trying to build a report in power bi desktop. When i connect to these data.it is a live connection and I'm not able to add coloumns and tables. Therefore I changed the connection to direct query by adding a local model. And I'm planning to build the report and publish it. My question is will it be having any impact o the sql server? Will it be directly getting data from sql server rather than from the data source already uploaded to the power bi?

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Hi @Anonymous ,

No, when you change the connection type, you will get data from Power BI Dataset with Direct Query connection mode.

With DirectQuery for Power BI datasets and Analysis Services, you can use DirectQuery to connect to Power BI datasets, Azure Analysis Services (AAS), and SQL Server 2022 (CTP) Analysis Services - and you can even combine with other DirectQuery and imported data. Report authors who want to combine the data from their enterprise semantic model with other data they own, such as an Excel spreadsheet, or want to personalize or enrich the metadata from their enterprise semantic model, will find this feature especially useful.

For more details, you can read related document: Using DirectQuery for datasets and Analysis Services (preview) - Power BI | Microsoft Learn

Best regards,
Community Support Team_Binbin Yu
If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

[lbendlin]

That is correct.  When you choose a Direct Query connection you need to make sure that your data source has the performance and capacity to support all these queries.

However the message you are showing is unrelated to SQL Server. What you did is connect to a Power BI dataset, and now you are trying to modify that dataset.