Forum Discussion

david_blabla's avatar
david_blabla
Frequent Visitor
6 years ago

Query empty data set will lead to nothing is downloaded - How do I fix that?

Hi all,

 

For our use-case we are creating standard dashboards and reports connected to a couple of web APIs. We will set these up for some different clients at the beginning of their project. Since it is only the beginning of the project it might very well be that some of the endpoints do not provide any data yet, since data of that type was not yet created in the project.

 

Neverthless there are dashboards which could already be displayed based on the other data types.

 

Problem is that PowerBI does not download anything if one of the endpoints comes up empty, hence nothing can be displayed.

 

Is there any way around that issue so that PowerBI continues downloading even though some parts are still empty?

 

Thanks for the help,

David

Need Help

3 Replies

  • parry2k's avatar
    parry2k
    Super User
    6 years ago

    david_blabla you have to do an error check in your power query so that when there is empty data, it doesn't fail. Have a look at this post and implement it in your solution.

     

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  • v-juanli-msft's avatar
    v-juanli-msft
    Community Support
    6 years ago

    Hi david_blabla 

    If your data has columns' names but has no value for each column, power query could read data into power bi.

    But if there is no any information from your data source, power query would not read any data by default.

     

    Best Regards

    Maggie

    • david_blabla's avatar
      david_blabla
      Frequent Visitor
      6 years ago

      Hi v-juanli-msft,

       

      Thanks for you reply - When you say "power query would not read any data by default" does that mean that there is an option to make it load data even when there is no information from the source?

       

      It does not feel right to setup our endpoint in a way that it serves empty files without any content if nothing is to be shared yet. Can't I tell PowerBI to jump over an empty endpoint but continue to download the rest, run dashboards based on the available info!?

       

      Thanks,

      David