Issues with Oracle Direct Query mode

[ashrafezz817]

Dear Power BI Team,

I have been encountering several issues with DirectQuery mode following the (Dec 2024) and (Jan 2025) updates. These problems occur randomly and often require a restart to resolve. Common errors include “Could not retrieve data” and “Couldn't connect to the server,” which significantly disrupt workflow.

Recently, I faced another issue. After adding two columns to a database view and refreshing the data in my report (running on DirectQuery), I later removed the columns from the database and attempted to refresh the data in Power BI. Although these columns were never used in the report, the report stopped functioning and displayed an error stating that the columns couldn't be retrieved.

Attempts to refresh the data resulted in a “Cannot connect to server” error. When I tried to manually remove the columns via the Data tab, Power BI froze after deleting just one column. I restarted the application and retried the process, but it continued to freeze after deleting a single column.

I reverted to an older version of Power BI, and it worked without issues. I was able to refresh the data and successfully remove the unnecessary columns. However, when I reopened the same report in the (Jan 2025) update, it failed again. It displayed an error related to a columns that no longer exists in the data or report. After multiple attempts—including clearing the cache and restarting the application—I was eventually able to resolve the issue, but the process was unnecessarily time-consuming.

I would greatly appreciate your support in improving the reliability of the newer Power BI versions, as the older versions seem to more reliable.

[Anonymous]

Hi,@ashrafezz817 .I am glad to help you.
It looks like you did a lot of hard work and finally solved the problem by using a historical version of Power BI Desktop, for which there were problems with columns in the data source (new columns/deleted columns/column name changes)
These are semantic model schema changes, which have to be refreshed in desktop (usually by clearing the cache) and then republishing the modified reports to the power bi service.
This is exactly what you have done.
For the current issue with the new version of desktop, you can create a Microsoft ticket  to provide feedback on the issue and avoid having the development team check if the Webview2 runtime version has compatibility issues with the currently affected version of Power BI Desktop.
The Link of Power BI Support:

Microsoft Fabric Support and Status | Microsoft Fabric

Thank you for your support of Power BI.

I hope my suggestions give you good ideas, if you have any more questions, please clarify in a follow-up reply.
Best Regards,
Carson Jian