Forum Discussion
Basic question about properly planning reports and Data Refresh - how it is done in the industry
Hi arunbyc , thank you for reaching out to the Microsoft Fabric Community Forum.
There are several courses in youtube one can learn from. Below are the links to the videos and Microsoft Learn Documentation that i recommend. :
You can find Microsoft doucumentation on almost everything PowerBI here:
1. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/?wt.mc_id=powerbi_inproduct_settings
2. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/training/powerplatform/power-bi
For Individual Courses try these:
1. Learn Power BI: Tutorial for Beginners -Full Cours... - Microsoft Fabric Community
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyWVzAQF9YU
3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDgyDXyu6FQ
4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENZm_7jWU4Q
5. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MII8NIF98RM
6. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/connect-data/refresh-data
7. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/connect-data/service-gateway-onprem
8. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/data-integration/gateway/service-gateway-manage
9. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/data-integration/gateway/service-gateway-install
10. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/connect-data/desktop-directquery-about
If this helps, please consider marking it 'Accept as Solution' so others with similar queries may find it more easily. If not, please share the details.
Thank you.
But don't most people simply use the import method? How do they all make the refresh less burdensome? Does making one most general datamodel, and having all my reports on different pages using only subsets of the tables and columns from this datamodel an option? Or does such an approach, though seems conceptually feasible, cause any practical problems? Or is what I am thinking not feasible at all?
Hi arunbyc ,
Anonymous proposed the correct approach. Having one semantic model that you use for multiple reports is still an import mode model, if you choose so. This will exactly solve your concern that you need many refreshes for many semantic models that send many queries to your database. With this approach you would only have nine queries per refresh, two fact tables and seven dimension tables, into one semantic model.
This approach has additional technical advantages that are not so obvious to the report author:
- Having one data model for all reports means that the backend keeps only one cache for everyone which makes it more likely that a query hits the cache which gives you a faster user experience.
- Multiple semantic models also consume additional RAM each on the backend server, which, depending on the size of the semantic models, makes it more likely that Power BI starts swapping in and out semantic models from memory, also giving you a slower user experience.
So, my recommendation is also, load your 9 tables with all the columns you need in any report into one semantic model and use it for all your reports. If you have security concerns, that not everyone who gets access to some fileds should get access to all field you can also set up object level security to control access to columns by users, but that's an advanced feature.
Kind regrads,
Martin
If we have a pro-license, does this live connection functionality come with it or do we have to subscribe or set up anything extra to get this running?
Live connection, in my experience, is quickly understood by beginners and does not come with a lot of side effects. The report in a seperate file is no differnt to the report in the same file as the semantic model. You need to be aware, if you have multiple reports connected to the semantic model, that changes in the semantic model, like deleting a measure, affects all these reports. But don't worry, once you are hooked with this approach, there is a tool to track these dependencies, Measure Killer: Measure Killer | Brunner BI
Live connection is included in the Pro license.
When sharing reports connected to one shared semantic model, you need to make sure, that you share with each report users both, access to the report and access to the semantic model. If all users have a workspace role, this does not require additional effort.
Of course, alternatively you can create one report with multiple pages, all in the same file as the one semantic model. This will make it less convenient to target different audiences, but it also simplifies other things, like drillthrough. Your decision depends on the user experience you want to achieve.
Does not having one sematinc model and then say 8 or 9 pages of reprts from one that one model in one pbix accomplish this? Live link seems a little advanced for me as a beginner, nit knowing what that entails. If I do as above without a live link, does it cause any problems?