CI/CD with incremental refresh partitions

[wojciech]

Hi Community,

There are many ways to automate your PBI dataset deployment using tools such as PBI-tools, Tabular editor, DevOps Extensions, In-Line PowerShell - this is what I'm aware of at least. However, all these methods will overwrite incremental refresh partitions, and full dataset refresh will be required during or after deloyment. The only tool that can do a proper schema compare and update dataset with changes without a meed to run refresh is ALM toolkit. Howerer, there is no CLI for ALM toolkit so it can not be baked into DevOps pipeline (Am I correct)?

Is there any way to automate schema updates deployment for PowerBI datset?

Many Thanks,

Wojciech 

[GilbertQ]

Hi @wojciech 

As far as I am aware PBI-Tools and Tabular Editor allow you to deploy changes that will not overwrite the existing partitions. You should look at the options to just deploy the schema and not process the dataset?

Have you seen the recent TMDL presentation from SqlBits which explains how this is going to change and be a lot easier!..

The Future of Version Control for Tabular Models - Mathias Thierbach,Gabi Münster - YouTube

[wojciech]

Hi @GilbertQ ,

I appreciate your reply.

I can see that you can run a command to update schema only, but you need to pass JSON defining what changes you want to push. I think the chellange for me is how to create that JSON structure which would define what changes there are between my source and and target database. 

I will dig into it.

Thanks for your help.

Wojciech

[GilbertQ · Accepted solution]

Hi @wojciech 

Yes you can make a change to the entire JSON structure and then update it, that should not enforce a refresh. I would strongly suggest testing this before rolling it out to a production environment.

[wojciech]

Hi @GilbertQ ,

I will give it a try in test enviroment.

Thanks for coming back to me.

Wojciech