Forum Discussion
General dissatisfaction and performance issues
Hi All,
After having our tech guys setting up a PostgreSQL database for me to build our datawarehouse on it, i have done all the automation that dumps the data from our main MongoDB to the datawarehouse, and then started with PowerBI.
I've created several reports, and when i was trying refreshing them, it was always throwing Exception errors at me when connecting to PostgreSQL, at least 3 or 4 times before working.
So then we upgraded to Pro, in order to get more space and relying on the scheduled automatic refresh, which back then wasn't supporting PostgreSQL. When got to open a ticket, i was called from a guy with broken english that suggested me to use another database... Really?
Now PostgreSQL is included in the list of automatic refresh sources.
It fails. Everytime. If i try to refresh manually, at some point, after trying the usual 3 or 4 times, it starts, and then if i'm lucky, it slowly finishes.
On one of my biggest reports i'm connecting to a few tables of the same PostgreSQL database with around 700k rows and no more than 10/12 columns, a couple of locally stored, small excel files, and a few API calls to Pipedrive. The PBIX file is around 300MB and it's just impossible to refresh. To the point i have to try and refresh manually every data source, of coures trying 3, 4 or 5 or more times per source. To cut it short, it takes me 1 hour to refresh this dashboard...
I make extensive use of PBI, with over 20 reports shared throughout the company, and I cannot believe such poor performance.
And icing on the cake, i cannot open a ticket and i get prompted a page that says "Something went wrong."... well thank you.
Maybe i'm doing something wrong. Maybe there's a restriction somewhere that i'm not aware of.
I still think PBI is a great product and want to use it, but lately it's been frustrating and i'm considering other solutions.
If somebody can help I would be glad.
Sorry for the lenghty message and thanks.
8 Replies
You should use a different database. :)
Honestly, it is very likely the connector to PostgreSQL that is at fault here. That same amount of data in SQL Server or Azure SQL DB would import in minutes. That being said, I have no idea about your network infrastructure, storage, etc. so too many factors to isolate the cause. But, it might be worth spinning up an Azure SQL DB or SQL Server on an MSDN or development license. You can get a 30-day free trial of Azure SQL DB. Load your data and try it. If the performance is great, at least you know it really is Power BI's connector to PostgresSQL.
Thanks Greg_Deckler.
I think i will test Azure.
My question now is: why advertising something as if it works flawlessly when it clearly doesn't?
Had i knew about these issues previously, the whole setup would have been different. Now i'm in the middle of a new job with dashboards and reports developed upon something reluctant to work, andwill need to dump the data into another database, change the automations (Talend jobs, Jenkins etc.), all of this in a hurry, and triyng not to look like a total idiot to non technical people in the company.
Not cool.Azure is not an option, too expensive after the first month. Not setting up the whole system only for a month.
Will try something different.
Suspicions are sneaking into my mind though.
This could be my first and last subscription to PBI if what i think is true.
But first, i will test other data sources and the gateway extensively and see if it's only a PostgreSQL problem.
