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PhilWalker's avatar
PhilWalker
Frequent Visitor
4 years ago
Solved

Gateway - Data Source best practice

I have a report that takes data from a number of Excel files. These files are all stored within the same shared folder, and the report is published to the service with a scheduled refresh setup.   ...
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  • lbendlin's avatar
    lbendlin
    4 years ago

    I would use a single source for the top most folder. Performance will be the same but maintenance will be simpler.

lbendlin's avatar
lbendlin
Super User
4 years ago

My vote is strongly in the folder connector corner.  In fact, in our company we do not permit any file based connectors.

  • PhilWalker's avatar
    PhilWalker
    Frequent Visitor
    4 years ago

    Thanks for the reply.

     

    So, could I ask, if you had a folder structure something like this...

    - Reports

         - Report 1

              - Data Files

         - Report 2

              - Data Files

         - Report 3

              - Data Files

         - Report......

     

    Would you have a data source for each "Reportn" folder, or a single data source at the top "Reports" level? I'm not sure if there are any performance or other implications of using a single data source, especially if more than one report is being refreshed at the same time.

     

    • lbendlin's avatar
      lbendlin
      Super User
      4 years ago

      I would use a single source for the top most folder. Performance will be the same but maintenance will be simpler.

      • MarkPalmberg's avatar
        MarkPalmberg
        Kudo Commander
        4 years ago

        Thanks for this reply, lbendlin . In the instance of SQL server data sources, we're thinking of cleaning up our existing sources to have only a single source per server which specifies the Master database. Then, any specific SQL we write against that datasource will include the database name in the object reference. E.g., FROM DATABASE.SCHEMA.TABLE instead of FROM SCHEMA.TABLE. That saves us (I believe?) from having a separate data source for each SERVER/DATABASE combination in use.

         

        Are you aware of any MSFT or other documentation on the best practice here? Thanks for your time!