PowerBi Online Service - PostgreSQL - Encrypted Connection

[seeeaad]

Hello,

I'm experiencing an issue with connecting to PostgreSQL in Power BI Service. I created reports in Power BI Desktop, connecting to multiple data sources, including my PostgreSQL database. In Desktop, I successfully disabled the "Encrypt Connection" option, and the connection worked fine. However, after publishing the report online, Power BI Service enforces an encrypted connection, which prevents automatic refreshes. Although I disabled encryption in Power BI Service’s data source settings and it shows as successful there, the refresh in the Semantic Model still enforces encryption, causing an error. How can I resolve this?

[v-denglli-msft · Accepted solution]

Thanks for the reply from GilbertQ, please allow me to provide another insight.
Hi @seeeaad ,

Have you tried connecting to PostgreSQL via ODBC?
In my testing, after connecting to the local PostgreSQL via ODBC, I can perform the scheduled refresh in the service.

Please check the following links.

PostgreSQL data refresh using Data Gateway in Power BI report | by Ramu Vudugula | Medium

Best Regards,
Dengliang Li

If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

[seeeaad]

This works. Thanks a lot for this. The sad thing about this that it requires my machine to be working all the time. Any workarrounds for this rather than hosting a VM for this , because I need this data to be constantly refreshed for my teammates. I will mark this as Accepted Solution.

[GilbertQ]

Hi @seeeaad 

Could this solutionn possibly work?(2) Solved: Power BI cannot establish secure connection to the... - Microsoft Fabric Community

[seeeaad]

Hi, @GilbertQ 
Here are the two ways explained in the link you have sent me:

1. Making an encrypted connection possible by installing a certificate on the remote server: This isn't possible right now because my database doesn't support these certificates. I might acquire them later, but for now, it's not feasible.

2. Making a connection possible via a gateway: This requires my PC to be running since I serve as the gateway.

What's confusing is that on my desktop, I disable this, and the sync works perfectly fine. However, when I publish it on Fabric, it still tries to connect with an encrypted connection. I can disable the encrypted connection specifically for that data source on Power BI Online, where it shows the connection is successful. But when I try to refresh the workspace inside the semantic model, it still insists on an encrypted connection.