Forum Discussion
Advocate VManaging and Exporting High-Volume Datasets (~1M Records) in Power BI
Advocate VHi Gabry, v-hashadapu ,
So I was going through some posts I did come across one video wherein they have demonstrated how to export more records (more than the limit). In the video the instructor mentioned 3 approaches:
i) Method-1: Using the DAX query view (in-built in Power BI Desktop) wherein we simply use: EVALUATE 'table_name' and run the DAX query and copy the data into a csv/excel
Con: The limitation is it only supports upto 500K records, beyond that not possible.
The next two approaches that were been discussed were using External Tools:
ii) Bravo
iii) DAX Studio
In both these tools all we need to do is simply select the table, the export type (excel or csv) and done.
This is better, but now for the end-user to simplify this process can we do something like within a button click (let's say we select the table) and start the export process (by calling any of the external tool explicitly).
Considering the end-user to be a non-technical person they want this process to be simplified like few clicks.
If you have any inputs with respect to this, please do let me know.
Regards,
Sidhant.
- Gabry
Super User
Hi,
I’m not sure I fully understand why you’d prefer using Bravo or other external tools, when you already have Fabric notebooks, UDFs, and OneLake available. Is there something specific missing from this approach?
I’m not too familiar with how those tools work under the hood, maybe they rely on the XMLA endpoint?
In any case, if the goal is to add a button inside the report, as far as I know you’d still need to use either Power Automate or a UDF. I’m not aware of other options
- Sidhant
Hi Gabry ,
Thanks for the reply, I had shared the external tools as one way (kind of backup). Earlier you did mention to make use of Notebooks since I haven't worked on that front can you please let me know how to achieve (the required functionality) and with Power Automate, if you have any resources that can help to get this (I have worked with Power Automate before but not such a large data).
I did not get 'UDF', what's that.
Regards,
Sidhant.- Gabry
Thanks for the updates! I understand your point about using external tools like Bravo or DAX Studio for exporting data, but I think it’s worth considering the advantages of using Fabric Notebooks, UDFs, and Power Automate for this kind of task, especially when working with large datasets.
The main benefit of the Fabric + Power Automate approach is that it offers a more streamlined, scalable, and integrated solution.
Here’s how the flow could work:
Power BI Report: Users select fields via slicers or parameters.
Power Automate Flow: The flow captures user selections (through a Power BI button).
Fabric Notebooks: The notebook processes the selected data (filtering, formatting) and exports it as CSV/Excel to OneLake or Blob Storage.
Automated Notification: The flow sends the user an email with the exported file or a link to the file in storage.
Using Power Automate and Notebooks will let you handle much larger datasets efficiently, and it integrates seamlessly into existing Power BI workflows. Additionally, as you've mentioned, bypassing the Power BI export limit (150k rows) is easily achievable with this approach.
On the oder side you can also check translytical task flowsIt leverages UDFs (User Data Functions), allowing you to place a button in the Power BI report that captures the filter context and uses it to run a notebook or python code to export the data you need.
