Forum Discussion
Star Schema cross-join
i don't think bidirectional will work with direct query mode
i don't think bidirectional will work with direct query mode
Disappointing, but that's reality sometimes. Thanks.
(maybe someday...)
What is your specific reporting need where you need to have matrices without measures based on your fact? There might be some convenient workarounds similar to my post above to cover those.
If it's all tabular reporting without hitting the fact table, then Power BI is not the tool for you. Power BI is specifically optimized for analytical reporting, and not as a fancy UI for a SQL query generator (though Power Query can function as such).
Fair question on requirements, but I'm really making this up as I go. We're still getting data cleansed & standardized in an Azure SQL Data Warehouse, so I'm trying to evaluate options on BI & Reporting tools in parallel as time allows...which means that there was no requirement for matrices of data. It was just what I was doing that day while exploring options for self-service BI that might mimic what we could get from ROLAP tools like MicroStrategy or Cognos.
fchukoskie, understood. Hopefully my explanations helped you understand the behavior better. I would recommend playing with Power BI some more with this new understanding. The relationship semantics are a bit unfamiliar at first, but it turns out they encourage design patterns that end up making the reporting and analysis pieces very intuitive even for non-technical end users.
Ultimately, Power BI is a very flexible suite of tools that deserves attention, even if it's not the solution you choose.
Well, direct query mode has intrinsic technical challenges since the data do not live in the model. I will gladly trade directional relationships for ability to enhance direct query mode based models with calculations.
