SQL data synchronization

[JoseVictor]

Hello, i'm new on Power BI and currently i'm working at a company as a intern. My job here is to make a Dashboard that shows all the useful data from the company. I need to synchronize the company system with Power BI, so when the employees add more data the Dashboard will be up-to-date too. If i get the data from a SQL Server the Dashboard will update too?

[Mikelytics · Accepted solution]

Hi @JoseVictor 

When you use Power BI there are two basic ways to connect to SQL-Database

1) Import mode

2) Direct Query

When you use import mode then you can manually trigger or schedule the refresh of the load, also multple times a day.

When you use Direct Query the data will everytime retrieved from the SQL database when somebody interacts with the report.

BUT in Directy Query you have several restrictions in what you can do. This is why most solutions are built using import mode which is also the recommended practice. If you have very clean data in SQL and less transformation is needed then Direct QUery could be a valid choice. Otherwise you would need to go with import.

Please find below some additional content:

Power BI Get Data: Import vs. DirectQuery vs. Live (2021) - Bing video

DirectQuery in Power BI - Power BI | Microsoft Learn

Best regards
Michael
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[jdbuchanan71]

You would schedule the refreshes of the data set and it would pull the newest data each time the refresh happens.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/connect-data/refresh-data