Power BI & Dynamic CRM vs Power BI & MC Azure

[Anonymous]

I'm using Power BI with MC dynamic CRM online (dynamic 365), my reports have set to be schedule refreshed, some hourly and some daily depend on the dataset.  Beacsue some dataset contain millions of data will take hours to refresh.  

Because our Dynamic CRM are based on MC Azure database,  I'm wonder what's the difference between Power BI connect to Dynamic CRM vs Power BI connect to Azure?   will that be a lot quike? or live? 

thanks

[v-qiuyu-msft · Accepted solution]

Hi @Anonymous,

In my opinion, the big difference is that the Azure SQL database supports DirectQuery mode in Power BI, while Dynamic CRM doesn't. DirectQuery lets you build visualizations over very large datasets, where it otherwise would be unfeasible to first import all of the data. You can refer to this article: Use DirectQuery in Power BI Desktop.

In your scenario, you can go through the limitation in this article, if your report doesn't hit the limitation, you can consider connecting to Azure SQL database in DirectQuery mode. When it's DirectQuery mode, schedule refresh is disabled. You can see how it refresh from here: Databases in the cloud.

Best Regards,
Qiuyun Yu