Data Source Parameters in Direct Lake mode

[wojciech]

Hi Community,

I’m trying to find out whether it’s possible to parameterize a Direct Lake connection. From what I can see, once connected to a Lakehouse in Direct Lake mode, there’s no option to edit Power Query and add parameters.

Ideally, I’d like to parameterize the Workspace ID and Lakehouse ID in the connection path.

expression 'DirectLake - FlowMonitoring' =
    let
        Source = AzureStorage.DataLake(
            "https://onelake.dfs.fabric.microsoft.com/r0000d91-0000-0000-9745-4rty2fa0e23c/bb2xz8c3-0000-0000-0000-0056c4f0000", 
            [HierarchicalNavigation = true]
        )
    in
        Source

I took the above from the TMDL view. However, I’m not sure what the best way is to repoint my Direct Lake model to a different Lakehouse when promoting the model across workspaces.

Any advice would be much appreciated.

Thanks,
WJ

[v-agajavelly]

Hi @wojciech ,

Circling back, were you able to clarify whether you were referring to parameterizing the report connection or the Direct Lake semantic model itself? That detail will help us determine if there’s any workaround beyond deployment pipelines. Let us know what you found so we can provide the right guidance.

Regards,
Akhil.

[v-agajavelly]

Hi @wojciech ,

Just checking in, were you able to look into super user follow-up on whether you were referring to parameterizing the report connection or the Direct Lake semantic model itself? That clarification would really help in figuring out if there’s any workaround beyond deployment pipelines.

Regards,
Akhil

[v-agajavelly]

Hi @wojciech ,

Thanks both for the clarifications so far. @wojciech  did you get a chance to look into the @MFelix  follow-up question around whether you meant parameterizing the report connection or the Direct Lake semantic model itself? That distinction will really help narrow down if there’s any possible workaround outside of deployment pipelines.

Regards,
Akhil.

[MFelix]

Hi @wojciech ,

If you are using Fabric I would suggest that you use a deployment pipelines to make the deploy to the final workspace, that will allow you to define the correct workspace and lakhouseid without the need to do it at the report level.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/fabric/cicd/deployment-pipelines/get-started-with-deployment-pipel...

You need to define the rules for the semantic model in order to get the correct values

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/fabric/cicd/deployment-pipelines/create-rules?tabs=new-ui

[wojciech]

Thanks Miguel,

That could work, but we don't really use deployment pipelines for various reasons.

Are we saying that parmetarisiation of direct lake models is currently not supported then?

Thank you,

WJ

[MFelix]

Hi @wojciech ,

Just to understand a little bit better when you refer to parameters in a connection to Direct lake you are refering to a Report connected to Direct Lake semantic model, or do you want to parameterize the Direct Lake semantic model itself?

[wojciech]

Sorry for the late reply.

I meant semantic model connected to Fabric lakehouse in my case.

Ideally, I would like to parametirise workspace id and lakehouse id, but you can't edit Power Query in Direct Lake mode.

Thank you,

WJ

[MFelix]

Hi @wojciech ,

The option to directly do it is not available has you say however you can do it using a notebook and semanticlink labs, this is a small script that will rebind the workspace and dataset

Check this video below and the script:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlY4JhqU1nc

https://github.com/microsoft/semantic-link-labs/tree/main/notebooks

You can then use all sort of options to run this notebook mannually or using a file with those configurations.

[wojciech]

Hi @MFelix ,

I really appreciate your answer.

The above is showing a report rebind, while my chellange was to re-point semantic model between different lakehouses. 
I will try to see wheter semantic-lab has got a method for that.

Thanks again,

WJ