On-Premise Data Gateway and PowerBI

[Marcusv]

Hi Everyone.

I hope I’ve posted this is the correct section, if not I apologies.

I've installed / configured and registered our organization data gateway and it's status in app.powerbi.com under manage gateways is shown as (Online: You are good to go.) Let's refer to this gateway as "OrgGateway"

Within that i have also configured a Data Source and it's status = Connection Successful. Let's refer this Data source as "OurDS".

Now, when I’m in Power BI the desktop application, how do i tell Power BI to reference OurDS which in turn will utilize OrgGateway?
When I’m in Power Bi Desktop and select Get Data i see no reference to anything that will look at OurDS.

I do however find reference to a direct connection to SQL under the Database section. Am I missing anything here?
What am i meant to use when trying to use OurDS?

[Seth_C_Bauer · Accepted solution]

@Marcusv To answer your question specifically.

Now, when I’m in Power BI the desktop application, how do i tell Power BI to reference OurDS which in turn will utilize OrgGateway?

You don't, you just make sure you connect to the datasource exactly the same way you set it up in the Gateway.

When I’m in Power Bi Desktop and select Get Data i see no reference to anything that will look at OurDS.

As @KHorseman explains, that is not the gateway's role. You need to create different connections to the same datasource. When you publish to the Service, the gateway will recognize the datasource and you will be able to use your OrgGateway to refresh the data, or be the direct connection to your data source.

I do however find reference to a direct connection to SQL under the Database section. Am I missing anything here?

Connection Types are different than the gateway. See here, I blogged about this awhile ago. If you are using SQL as an example, you could use Direct Query as the connection type. Then when you published to the Service, the OrgGateway would automatically recognize it and support the connection without the need to schedule a refresh.

What am i meant to use when trying to use OurDS?

The same data source you set up in the OrgGateway.

The gateway just refreshes data (or keeps a connection) to on premises sources. Once published, for data sources you imported, you still need to go to the new DataSet in the service and schedule a refresh. The OrgGateway will be an option for you to use, because you set it up already. 

[KHorseman]

The data gateway is a bridge used to refresh data from your on-premise source to the published report in the cloud. The gateway is not itself a data source. You build reports using Power BI Desktop by connecting to your source, in this case your SQL database. Then you publish those reports to the web service. The gateway then allows you to refresh that published dataset.