Share your thoughts on DirectQuery for Power BI datasets and Azure Analysis Services (preview)

[tessahurr]

Hit Reply and let us know what you think of the DirectQuery for Power BI datasets and Azure Analysis Services.  To learn more about this feature, please visit this blog post or our documentation.

Here are some areas that we'd like to hear about in particular:

• Performance
• Query editor experience--the remote model query doesn't show up in the query editor and only in the data source settings dialog. What are your thoughts?
• Navigator experience
• Thoughts around governance and permissions for models that leverage this feature
• Nesting models, i.e. building a composite model on top of a composite model
• Automatic page refresh for live connect in composite models

Thanks and we look forward to hearing your feedback!

- The Power BI Modeling Team

[jeroenterheerdt]

it is pretty cool, thanks 🙂 regarding the next version of SQL - not sure, but looking at the speed of previous releases I'd say 2022/2023.

[JoshAsh]

To be blunt, the lack of conformed dimension support, the errors, the bugs, the poor performance on all but tiny datasets... This feature is useless to enterprise customers. 

Please prioritise quality over speed to market.

Josh Ash

[jeroenterheerdt]

thanks for the feedback - it would be great if you can give specific examples of where you are seeing perf issues, errors, bugs and on which version of Desktop. We have worked on improving performance specifically in the last couple releases of Desktop and our telemetry shows that those improvements are paying off. Curious to learn what you think we need to do as well. Also, not sure what you mean that we don't support conformed dimensions. We are working on a best practices document that explains how to deal with the most common issues people have with this feature.

[TSHECKEL]

Has there been any further thoughts around the end user permissions that are required in order to view a published report that has been crafted from a shared dataset under the Direct Query / Local Model? 

Having to add a report end user / consumer to the primary shared dataset with Build permissions is an issue. We have analysts that we restrict to shared datasets and in turn they share out their reports to end users. Having the analyst grant users access to the report they created and then turning to the admins to have the end users granted Build permission to the shared dataset is a security issue. These end users could then connect to the core shared dataset and access data they should not be able to view.  

[Sla5ha]

I brought this up a while ago. Is it being addressed? If so when will it be fixed? 

[hornsjd]

I haven't heard that it's been addressed, but I recommend voting on this idea here:

Microsoft Idea  · Directquery for datasets only needs read permissions on all datasets (powerbi.com)

[jeroenterheerdt]

I can confirm it has not been addressed but will be before we declare this generally available.

[AnalystPete]

Any idea when it will be declared generally available?  I can't see it on the roadmap.  We don't allow build permissions so until we can use this with read only access, we can't use it.

[jbj85]

Hi,

We have a dataset that is combing two datasets from separate workspaces. When we renamed one of the workspaces the composite dataset failed, as the connection seemed to be referencing the workspace names, as opposed to the workspace ids. Is this behavious likely to be addressed?

Many Thanks!

[jeroenterheerdt]

the reference by workspace name is actually by design for technical reasons. We will publish a best practices doc that lists this as well as other things. Sorry for the inconvience.

[Anonymous]

I have a model + thin report and need to rename tables from data source, but this breaks the thin report.

How can I update table names referenced in the report?

[jeroenterheerdt]

have you tried opening the report in Desktop and selecting Refresh?

[Anonymous]

Yes, it refreshes the dataset and shows new table names but that's the problem... all visuals are bronken because are using old tables fields.

Then only solution I got is to manually edit each report pbix Layout file, but it's not very convenient.

For anyone searching, this (dangerous) solution is described here:

https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Desktop/Modifying-the-Layout-file-that-is-embedded-in-a-pbix-file/t...

[Anonymous]

I created an Idea to address this question, can you help voting?

Renaming dataset measures can't break client reports (change reference from name to ID)

https://ideas.powerbi.com/ideas/idea/?ideaid=649ec802-682b-ec11-b76a-281878e608e9

[Quentin]

Looking and playing around i managed to have some cool things about Metric Usage!

Metric Usage are available at workspace level (generate it for one report and you have all reports for the workspace, however you cannot download the pbix) and at admin level (however you cannot make any modification there)

So i was able to create some usage metric (save as a copy) of some specific workspaces (production Workspace of some departments only), connect to these datasets in desktop and in DAX i join the tables via formulas like this one:

ViewersRanking_Global = UNION(ADDCOLUMNS(ViewersRanking,"Workspace","PRO"),ADDCOLUMNS('ViewersRanking 2',"Workspace","DEV"))

And this helps to create a fully customizable Usage Metric Dashboard with no need for API (that need refresh token the IT team may not give you)

Tell me if you had better ideas and if this is stupid 🙂 

[ab14]

Hi,

I've a scenario where we've country master dataset where row level security is applied to restrict data based on the user's location. We've using this master dataset as a source for another dataset using direct query but the RLS applied isn't getting propagated. Is this by design or a limitation of this feature? 

[DanRider]

Set up RLS on each individual model and everything will function as you are expecting.

[ab14]

I don't get the option to apply RLS on country table (coming from remote model/dataset) in my composite model. The table name doesn't appear when defining RLS rules in Power BI desktop. I'm not sure if I'm missing anything?

[jeroenterheerdt]

RLS does not flow from the remote to your local model. This is by design. Thanks for providing the feedback, though.

[ab14]

Thanks for the prompt reply. So in a use case like this, I assume using dataflows might be the next best option? Also, are there plans of introducing RLS from remote models to local in the pipeline?

[jeroenterheerdt]

we are looking at the RLS to local thing, but it's a lot of work and to be honest, not a lot of people have asked for it. Please vote on it on ideas if you want this to happen. Dataflows could be a option for you.