Is there a migration path between Power BI Designer file and a Tabular instance?

[virtuej]

Power BI Designer saves a PBIX file type.  I wanted to see if the Data Model in Designer can be imported into SQL Server Tabular instance.  This is similar to Excel and Visual Studio where we can migrate content from Power Pivot to Tabular and provide scale-out options. 

[andre]

If you rename your .pbix file as a .zip file and open it up you will see a DataModel file (you can do the same with the Excel based Power Pivot models as well, although the location of the file is a little different). This data model file is a backup of an AS Tabular database.

If you try to grab this file from Excel 2013 Power Pivot model and restore it on AS 2014 tabular instance, it will work. If you try to grab that model from .pbix file and restore it on AS 2014 it will not work because I am assuming that the .pbix based model is using the format and features of the next version of SQL Server AS…

I have not tried it to restore it to the CTP of SQL Server 2016, but my guess is that eventually it will work and we will be able to promote designer files to AS the same way we can do it today with Excel based Power Pivot models. I am also guessing that .pbix files will never be supported on SQL Server 2014.

Until that functionality is available, we do have a big problem because a lot of users love the Designer and invest a lot of hours in building models using that tool. Unfortunately, these models cannot be promoted to Analysis Services today which means that they cannot be secured. It is very important to manage expectations of your end users who, based on previous demos from Microsoft, may expect this functionality today and tell them this this feature may not be available for several months.

[JenUnderwood]

Great minds think alike Andre!  This scenario is indeed on the radar.  Interestingly, I tried the exact same thing and I was not able to restore the Power BI Designer data model file to SSAS Tabular 2014. **IF** it did work, it would not be an officially supported upgrade path right now.

[andre]

Jen, do you happen to know what CTP of SQL 16 would be Designer compatible?

[Arieln · Accepted solution]

There is no automatic upgrade from the Designer to ATabular for number of reasons that involves updateing the AS server (we are using new functionallity that your AS Server cant support at this point).

At this point, I cant share when it will change. I encourage you placing suggestion in uservoice.

[Vishal]

I thought of writing blog for this but there is already good content avilable

Please see whether this three links can help you

• Import Data from Tabular Model in Excel Using a DAX Query
• Publishing Tabular Models to SSAS
• Using Microsoft Excel to Retrieve SSAS Tabular Data

Hope this help,

Vishal

BI Solution Architect 

Blog - BI Mentalist , SQL Mentalist