Power BI Report Server Execution Log

[kieranW]

We are running Microsoft Power BI Report Server Version 14.0.600.434. I am trying to extract useful metadata and usage statistics from the ReportServer DB and to do so I am using dbo.ExecutionLog3 as per the generic Report Server documentation here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/reporting-services/report-server/report-server-executionlog-and...

1. Does any specific documentation around this exist for Power BI Report Server? I have been unable to find any.
2. My ReportServer DB contains a number of ItemAction values which are not present in the generic Report Server documentation. I assume this is because these are ItemActions that are specific to Power BI Report Server. The key ones are: QueryData, AsModelStream, DataRefresh, SaveToCatalog, ConceptualSchema, Execute, Render and Toggle. Can anyone provide definitions for these?
   
   
3. The various Time fields (TimeDataRetrieval, TimeProcessing, TimeRendering) in dbo.ExecutionLog3 are blank for items with the source PBIX. I assume this is because these actions are all taking place against the underlying data sources (mostly SSAS Tabular in our case, some SQL Server and Excel datasources too). However there is still a TimeStart and TimeEnd value for each record. What is the significance of these timestamps, for example in a QueryData record for a PBIX file? The gap between TimeStart and TimeEnd is usually 100-200ms, whereas I know that in reality most of our reports take more like 1000ms to render. Therefore it doesn’t seem that these timestamps can be used to calculate the time it took for the report to render for the end user viewing it via a web browser. If this is the case, how do I find out how long a PBIX file in fact took to render?

Thanks,

Kieran

[amirmollaei1]

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@kieranW wrote:
2. My ReportServer DB contains a number of ItemAction values which are not present in the generic Report Server documentation. I assume this is because these are ItemActions that are specific to Power BI Report Server. The key ones are: QueryData, AsModelStream, DataRefresh, SaveToCatalog, ConceptualSchema, Execute, Render and Toggle. Can anyone provide definitions for these?

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I know that this question ask about 4 years ago, but while I've been searching for ItemAction definition in Power BI Report Server DB, I've Reaching to this post. 

I've found the answer to question number 2 and I will share with you maybe someone like me still searching for it.

"Execution log entries for Power BI reports differ from entries for other report types.

• TimeRendering columns is always 0. Rendering of Power BI reports happens in the browser, not in the server.
• There are 2 Request Types and subsequent item actions:
  • Interactive: whenever a report is being viewed.
    • ASModelStream: when the data model is streamed to Analysis Services from the catalog.
    • ConceptualSchema: when user clicks on viewing the report.
    • QueryData: whenever data is being requested from client.
  • Refresh Cache: whenever a schedule refresh plan has been executed.
    • ASModelStream: whenever the data model is streamed to Analysis Services from the catalog.
    • DataRefresh: whenever data is being refreshed from one or more data sources.
    • SaveToCatalog: whenever the data model is being saved back to the catalog."

Source: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/report-server/scheduled-refresh-troubleshoot#executionlog

[Anonymous]

This information would be helpful.  Not really sure what the item action of ASModelStream or ConceptualSchema means in the log files.  Help #Microsoft.

[cnschulz]

Late to the party but would love some help with this. There is no error reporting in Power Bi and we need something to alert us when refreshes fail.

[Anonymous]

With regards to failed scheduled refreshes I'm going to point you at this thread

https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Report-Server/List-of-current-Sheduled-Refresh-jobs/m-p/431409#M596...

You can get some meta data out of the Server database about what is deployed but the execution log seems to be missing most fo the useful detail. I have tried to see if the underlying log files have anything useful in them but stitching back together the execution sequence and what is actually involved is far from straight forward. So you can get usage information but not really any performance information at this point.

There was a thread on trying to get exec stats a while back.

https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Report-Server/Monitoring-and-reporting-on-usage/td-p/377775

As far as I can tell this is still correct there are no perfmon metrics available

S

[Ccparkhill]

I am also trying to extract some usage stats and have noticed that the Time columns are always 0. Opening a Power BI report appears to register a 'ConceptualSchema' ItemAction followed by a series of 'QueryData' ItemActions, any subsequent interactions with the report are also registered as 'QueryData' ItemActions.