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jusTodd's avatar
jusTodd
Icon for Advocate IV rankAdvocate IV
2 years ago
Solved

Splitting a Power BI (PBIX) File into a Dataset and Lean Report File ?

Looking for insight towards the benefits of this process for a small but growing organization.  

 

What performance difference is there, if any, between doing this and simply having the originating report with its dataset in place on the Power Bi Service, and simply attaching to that originating dataset as needed for other reports?

 

All of the dependencies look the same in the Power BI Service Lineage View, whether split or not, and it does not seem that there would really be any difference in peformance for any of the reports or datasets involved.

 

Don't want to watch and would rather read? I outlined the basic process below.

 

 

 

The essential points of this video are to ...
 
  1. Build the Report and Model
  2. Save Report-1
  3. Save As Report-2
  4. In Report-2
    1. Add a new blank tab
    2. Delete all other tabs
    3. Publish
  5. In Power BI Service,
    1. Delete Report-2, but not the dataset
  6. In Report-1,
    1. Transform
    2. Delete the model and all queries
    3. Close & Apply
    4. Save
    5. Get Data
      1. Choose Report-2 dataset in Power BI Service
    6. Repeat for any other reports needing data from Report-2 dataset
General Comment
  • Greg_Deckler's avatar
    Greg_Deckler
    2 years ago

    jusTodd There's nothing wrong with doing what you are saying, having the original report actually have report pages and attaching to it for future reports. This is more about separation of concerns. You can have someone that just does data modeling do the data modeling and publish to a workspace where they are the Owner and can modify things but report developers cannot and only have read/build rights. Then these report developers can be in different workspaces where they actually publish reports that use the "golden dataset" as their data source. 

2 Replies

  • Greg_Deckler's avatar
    Greg_Deckler
    Icon for Community Champion rankCommunity Champion
    2 years ago

    jusTodd There's nothing wrong with doing what you are saying, having the original report actually have report pages and attaching to it for future reports. This is more about separation of concerns. You can have someone that just does data modeling do the data modeling and publish to a workspace where they are the Owner and can modify things but report developers cannot and only have read/build rights. Then these report developers can be in different workspaces where they actually publish reports that use the "golden dataset" as their data source. 

    • jusTodd's avatar
      jusTodd
      Icon for Advocate IV rankAdvocate IV
      2 years ago

      Thank you, Sir.  That makes perfect sense.  Appreciate the response.