Time intelligence without date column

[ChrisClever]

Hi!

It looks like i stumbled upon a problem that i can't solve. I'm even starting to think it's unsolvable 🙂

I'm fetching data from sql:

Project	Time spent	Time planned
Proj1	345	999
Proj2	234	888

What i am trying to do is to add a column with last refresh date and append the table to another with historical data. So, that i have a log for every day with the values:

Project	Time spent	Time planned	Date
Proj1	345	999	2021-09-01
Proj2	234	888	2021-09-01
Proj1	356	999	2021-09-02
Proj2	240	888	2021-09-02
Proj1	367	999	2021-09-03
Proj2	247	888	2021-09-03

With rows added everyday.

Could you please help me out?

[v-jingzhang]

Hi @ChrisClever 

Agree that Power BI is not a database to hold all historical data.

In this case, you could export data from this table into another table in database daily (maybe need more DB experience or automatic tools) and add a Date column in the new table which records when new data is inserted. Then connect to this new table with Power BI. You can also export data into other data sources like Excel or CSV files with exporting datetime in filenames. Then connect to these files and combine them into one table with Power Query Editor. 

Regards,
Community Support Team _ Jing
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[AlexisOlson]

This is not time intelligence. This is trying to get Power BI to act like a database.

I think there are some convoluted hacks using incremental load that could achieve this but I'd strongly recommend using a different tool for creating and storing historical data.