Forum Discussion
Helper IIIHow to manage source data used in Power BI.
Hello, I'm in charge of Power BI development and operations.
I've recently become very interested in operations, and as the number of Power BI reports I'm developing increases, I'm curious how you manage the data sources used for each report. My current idea is to manually manage them in Excel and edit the Excel file when updating reports.
I heard you can use the API to identify the source data for each report, but I don't have the permissions to verify it. In this case, if I modify the source table name in Power BI, would I also be able to identify the source table name?
Hi ericjo
In Power BI Desktop and without an API, you can use the DAX Query view and execute INFO.PARTITIONS and then filter [QueryDefinition] column to something that contains let and source which is normally what Power Query tables start with.
EVALUATE FILTER ( INFO.PARTITIONS (), CONTAINSSTRING ( [QueryDefinition], "let" ) && CONTAINSSTRING ( [QueryDefinition], "source" ) )
8 Replies
- rajendraongole1
Super User
Hi ericjo - Yes, you can identify the source table name later from the report or semantic model without using admin APIs, but only if the table name is explicitly captured in the Power Query editor window.
Renaming tables only in model view or Report view is insufficient and does not preserve physical source lineage.
Hope this helps.
ericjoThank you for sharing this information. If you use a different name after loading the report, it won't be easily identified. How do you organize and manage the data sources used for each report? Recently, there was an ETL delay, which affected the report, so I'm trying to organize it.
- rajendraongole1
ericjo - Reports should never depend directly on raw or unstable data sources.
They should depend on controlled, observable semantic models.
- danextian
Hi ericjo
In Power BI Desktop and without an API, you can use the DAX Query view and execute INFO.PARTITIONS and then filter [QueryDefinition] column to something that contains let and source which is normally what Power Query tables start with.
EVALUATE FILTER ( INFO.PARTITIONS (), CONTAINSSTRING ( [QueryDefinition], "let" ) && CONTAINSSTRING ( [QueryDefinition], "source" ) )- ericjo
I have a lot of reports so I needed a way to organize them, thank you for the information!
Hi ericjo ,
Glad to hear this was helpful. When you’re dealing with a large number of reports, keeping source data well organized really helps with accessibility and ongoing maintenance.
If you have any other questions or need more clarification, feel free to reach out.
Thank you.
