Forum Discussion
Database connection via Power BI Service
Perhaps I was misunderstanding your original problem, if you are downloading the dataset (Report) from the PowerBI Portal then yes, you will be downloading the data last refreshed in the portal. If you press "Refresh" in Power BI Desktop, it will connect straight to the Sql Server Database, it will NOT go through the Gateway and it will NOT connect to Power BI Service (Cloud) and "re-download" the data from there.
The documentation for the Gateway is only relevant for Power BI Service, not Desktop.
But if you found the information you need, then that great.
Directly to the host
Thank you! Do you know of any product documentation that has this explicitly covered?
The Power BI desktop is not using the Power BI Gateway nor the data stored in the Power BI Service hence if you refresh it needs to connect directly. You can see this simply by opening the report in your Power BI Desktop client and go to Data Source Settings (under Edit Query button on the toolbar). Select the data source in question and see that it's connecting directly to the database.
Thanks for the reply, but I think it's not accurate in my context. The data source is the power bi service not the database itself, the options to edit the data source are greyed out.
In the meantime I found the correct answer - the client retrieves the data via the cloud, not directly from the gateway, definetly not from the db directly.
Full explanation in the How the gateway works section of the following:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/service-gateway-onprem
Perhaps I was misunderstanding your original problem, if you are downloading the dataset (Report) from the PowerBI Portal then yes, you will be downloading the data last refreshed in the portal. If you press "Refresh" in Power BI Desktop, it will connect straight to the Sql Server Database, it will NOT go through the Gateway and it will NOT connect to Power BI Service (Cloud) and "re-download" the data from there.
The documentation for the Gateway is only relevant for Power BI Service, not Desktop.
But if you found the information you need, then that great.