BigQuery connector - no support for nested data

[yan]

PowerBI does not support nested data in BigQuery, yet. See https://bigquery.cloud.google.com/table/bigquery-public-data:samples.github_nested, "repository" field contains many subelements and the below should detect the nested structure and show a "Table" datatype.

BQ returns a Json for "repository" like this (excerpt):

[
{
"repository": {
"url": "https://github.com/liferay/liferay-plugins",
"has_downloads": "true",
"created_at": "2009/09/25 15:56:21 -0700",
"has_issues": "false",
"description": "",
"forks": "180",
"fork": "false",
"has_wiki": "false",
"homepage": "",
"integrate_branch": null,
"master_branch": null,
"size": "8396",
"private": "false",
"name": "liferay-plugins",
"organization": "liferay",
"owner": "liferay",
"open_issues": "2",
"watchers": "211",
"pushed_at": "2012/03/29 23:02:08 -0700",
"language": "Java"
},

Any ETA on supporting this ?

[v-haibl-msft]

@yan

I can repro the same issue as you. I’ve reported it internally to Power BI Team: CRI 46724430
I’ll post here once I get any update about it.

Best Regards,
Herbert

[yan]

What is the turnaround from an Accepted status, or is there a due date already in which release this would be included ?

Unrelated - or is it -, no plan for biqQuery connector in power BI service ?

[yan]

Any ETA ?

[rrhutch]

Would love to know if this feature is going to be added sometime soon.

[yan]

It's been a year now and while @v-haibl-msft reported internally, there has been no sign that PBI will ever support this.

Aternatives are:

1. flatten the data (in a bq view, using unnest) but this could mean - does for us - a lot more data to import or query on. Defeats the purpose of using arrays - which is a datatype on Azure sql or sql server btw.

2. export from BQ to json, transform from NewLine json (not support by PBI) to "listed" json, and then import in PBI. Not real solution as we lose the DirectQuery feature so workaround is cumbersome.

I understand the competition is behind on this too - not Looker - but Tableau for instance is more explicit and transparent on it: https://community.tableau.com/ideas/8400 

The recent https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/desktop-connect-bigquery does not mention that nested and numeric fields are not supported.