basic question on power bi data storage

[Anonymous]

i have connected power bi desktop to Azure table storage and have built report and have published it to Power Bi service. I would like to know where my data is stored. is it stored in my Power Bi desktop or is it in cloud and just a connection has been made to the azure tabular storage.

if there is just a connection with tabular storage why my pbix file increases in size.
note: in Azure Tabular storage, you dont get option for direct query or import.

thanks

[Anonymous]

Hi @Anonymous ,

You can refer to this article, which talked about the composition of pbix. The reason why pbix becomes larger may be due to the increase in metadata.

What is your connection mode? There are three connection modes: import, direct query and live connection. In import mode, all data is imported into Power BI Desktop, so pbix will contain data. In the case of DQ/LC, the query is sent to the data source to obtain the data, so the data will not be saved to pbix. For more information, refer to this article.

Best Regards,

Stephen Tao

If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

[Anonymous]

@Anonymous 

As I said earlier my database here is Azure Tabular storage and when connecting to Azure Tabular storage from Power Bi, it does not give you option to select Import or DQ/LC, it simply asks for connection details of my table and once you provide the connection details, the tables are showed up. 

As it is a cloud database , I believe it is a live connection which is being made in the backend, however I am not sure and I am looking for confirmation. Also as per article link shared above, i converted my pbix to zip and I see that my Data Model file in the zip folder has maximum size(among all files in zip folder) and it increases when my data in the database(Azure tabular storage) increases, so thats tell me data is getting imported to my pbix.   Now back to original question where data is actually getting stored.

I hope you understood my doubt and now in a position to provide better clarification. Thanks

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Hi @Anonymous ,

Based on my own research, your connection mode is import mode. When you make a report in Power BI Desktop, your data is imported into the local pbix, that is, the data is stored in the local pbix. When you upload to Power BI Service, data that is uploaded from users is typically sent to Azure Blob Storage.

Hope you can understand.

Best Regards,

Stephen Tao

If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

[Anonymous]

Hi @Anonymous ,

It is stored in Azure Blob Storage. 

Power BI uses two primary repositories for storing and managing data: data that is uploaded from users is typically sent to Azure Blob Storage, and all metadata as well as artifacts for the system itself are stored in Azure SQL Database.

For more details, please kindly refer to: Data Storage Security

Best Regards,

Stephen Tao

If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

[Anonymous]

so my question is as i increase my Tabular storage data then why my pbix file size increases? i have not stored the data to my client right?? i have just made the connection to Azure tabular storage