Getting up to date data using Power BI instead of SSRS?

[marma330]

When building a report in SSRS, I hit the db directly: what I get is what's in the DB.. In Power BI, it's like a snapshot you build a report and unless you set some refresh (for the dataset), it will be static.

My question is: can I have in PowerBI a behaviour like SSRS? that is, that whenever I run the report in Power BI I get real-time data, without having to set up a refresh?

ps: the data source would be a table in a sql server DB.

[edhans · Accepted solution]

You can @marma330 - It is called Direct Query. However, it has some limitations. Power BI is designed from the ground up to refresh and import data, and all features are fully available. Direct Query has some transformation, DAX, and visual limitations. You can read more about it here. It is not a feature that should be used casually.