Skip to main content
cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Learn from the best! Meet the four finalists headed to the FINALS of the Power BI Dataviz World Championships! Register now

Reply
dsapelak
New Member

Using PowerBI to pull dynamic data source

Community,

 

I save a sql server table once per month with a date at the end of the name.  Same fields every month, it's a snapshot of our business.  Something like 'Business_Data_08312016'

 

I'm trying to figure out a way to create a PowerBI report that looks at a rolling 13 months-worth of these tables.  The only way I have figured out so far is kind of terrible, which is to make sproc that unions all of these together into one big table.  It works but it's a major data duplication that doesn't seem necessary.

 

I am open to any ideas.

 

thanks.

2 REPLIES 2
Anonymous
Not applicable

@dsapelak "Major data duplication".. A union will only pull the unique records... Are you trying to reduce the record size, or just determine what is the most efficient way to extract the data?

 

ankitpatira
Community Champion
Community Champion

@dsapelak If you use power bi desktop easiest way is to use sql queries to import data from tables. So you can type in sql queries that looks at all the tables of the past 13 months and bring in their data.

 

Capture.PNG

Helpful resources

Announcements
Join our Fabric User Panel

Join our Fabric User Panel

Share feedback directly with Fabric product managers, participate in targeted research studies and influence the Fabric roadmap.

February Power BI Update Carousel

Power BI Monthly Update - February 2026

Check out the February 2026 Power BI update to learn about new features.

FabCon Atlanta 2026 carousel

FabCon Atlanta 2026

Join us at FabCon Atlanta, March 16-20, for the ultimate Fabric, Power BI, AI and SQL community-led event. Save $200 with code FABCOMM.