One master dataset, report unique datasets, both?

[pikers]

Hi all,

I've been creating Power BI reports for a few years now. All reports are created from a mirror of our prod database that is used to drive our internal apps. The database is well structured and I have privileges to create most tables/views that I need to support reporting. I create reports for many different groups throughout the company so I'm often forced to look at the data differently for each group. Typically, I create a new dataset for each report as this allows me to:

• Only pull in the data needed. I can pull in the tables needed or write custom SQL to limit the results to exactly what is needed for the report.
• Schedule custom refresh times. Many of my reports need to be refreshed several times a day while others only need to be refreshed on a quarterly basis.
• Relate data structures in different ways. There are times where I need to make joins using multiple dimensions which is not easily done in Power BI. I typically do this in SQL and pull in the results as a table. 

My question is, should I try to create one master dataset from this database to drive as many of these reports as possible or should I continue with what I've been doing? I understand there are pros and cons but I wanted to know if there are any best practices that I'm not aware of that would force me to go in a specific direction. I understand there a limitations to refreshes within each workspace and space constraints but my datasets are fairly "lite" and I keep the workspaces clean to remove any unused reports. 

Any thoughts/feedback/experience is appreciated. 

Thanks!

[lbendlin · Accepted solution]

Hats off to you for doing the work of a whole team of data stewards.  You will want to consider including others in your company in this curation work and establish a data dictionary culture, data stewardship, and maintenance.

Best practices depend on the company size, the variety of data subjects, and the egos of the individual teams when it comes to subject matter expertise ownership.  Your current approach seems to be well suited to smaller sized enterprises.

For multi field table joins you can use composite keys or the custom generator functions in Power Query.