Data communication with SQL Azure from POWER BI

[debasish_mishra]

Now we have an option of connecting to sql azure from Office 2013 Excel sheet.We can use Power Query or Power Pivot to create models in excel but if we can have an option to connect sql azure from POWER BI SAAS based application like we are connecting to SALESFORCE to get real time data then it will be really helpful.I know there are number of configurations required to connect sql azure,but i guess it can be done by MICROSOFT to pull a data source and pinning the reports in dashboard.

[nishalit]

As you point out, currently you can use Power Query or the Power BI Designer to author reports based on SQL Azure data sources. You can then publish these reports to the Power BI Service and refresh them, create dashboards on top, etc. We're considering improving this in the future to also enable "live connections" to the data source, without the need to import data from them as happens today.

[#3]

This will be really beneficial. Is there an ETA for when we can expect this feature to be released?

[fbcideas_migusr]

It would be nice also if, in addition to all the Azure-based data sources, we also could query Azure Active Directory itself, to obtain information on, for example, license counts, group statistics, and so on. AAD itself is, in other words, an important data source (and I don't mean just the AAD usage logs).