Report specific measures in a report with a live connection to SSAS Tabular - Good, Bad, ugly

[rloski-public]

I guess this was a "feature" that was introduced six years ago (Power BI Desktop May Feature Summary | Microsoft Power BI Blog | Microsoft Power BI_.  You can create measures in a report that is attached to SSAS Tabular with Live Connection.

What do people think about this?

I am less than impressed. It has been difficult to find the source of an issue.  I start in the report and find that the measure that is not working has a name like "_measure test" with an expression that includes measures like XXX and Test3.  Occasionally there is an informative measure name in the expression (MTD Sales).  But then I have to figure out if MTD Sales is in the report or it is hidden in the report.

Most of the measures I am seeing in the reports were added because the equivalent measure in the SSAS model was not working.  I would much rather figure out what is broken rather than putting together a bunch of brittle scaffolding.

My data environment

Ok it is a feature.  But here are my thoughts.

• Use it to figure out how the measure might be fixed, but have it fixed in the SSAS model asap
• Ask whether this measure is truly specific to this report.  I mean if you are going to create a similar report based on the current one, putting a measure in the report is a maintenance nightmare
• If the measure is truly specific to the report, prefix the name of the measure with the name of the report as a kind of namespace identifier.  That way it will be harder for someone to create a measure with the same name that will break the measure.

Sorry, this has been bugging me.

[lbendlin · Accepted solution]

You wouldn't believe how often Power BI developers have no access to the SSAS cube designers.  Oftentimes these cubes have been around for many years and knowledge/desire to modify them is lacking.

[rloski-public]

Thank you for your comment.  I am certain that that is what motivated the use in my case.

The challenge is that the same measures are being used in multiple reports.  If I fix the measure in one of the reports it is very likely that it will be a while before someone notices that the same measure doesn't work in the other reports.  And if I fix the SSAS model by moving some of these measures from the report to the SSAS model I am likely  to break the other reports.

I guess that that this has always been an issue with self-service tools like Power BI.

Perhaps something like namespaces might help reduce the conflicts.

Thank you so much for replying and providing need perspective on this issue.