Theoretical Question, can PBI Desktop connect to a published PBI service data model?

[Jkaelin]

Good morning, 

Can Power BI desktop connect to a data model that is published on Power BI service?  (assuming it's your own account)

*I know this does not make a lot of sense, but knowing whether or not this is possible via ODBC connection or other connection method would help me resolve some deeper questions I have.  

Any thoughts?  Ideas?  

Thank you,

James ///  www.linkedin.com/in/james-kaelin

[Seth_C_Bauer · Accepted solution]

@Jkaelin Makes perfect sense, and its already supported. You can find the documentation here -> https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/desktop-report-lifecycle-datasets

In addition, they just released the ability to shared datasets across workspaces, so you have access to those datasets across the org and can connect to a dataset in one workspace and deploy to a different workspace.

On top of that, you have the ability to connect to any of those service datasets via XMLA, so if you want to connect via SQL or your other favorite tool that supports XMLA, you can.

[Jkaelin]

@Seth_C_Bauer  Thanks for the speedy reply.  If I understand you correclty, XLMA connectivity is how a Tableau user would connect to a published PBI service data (& is XLMA endpoint is still PBI Premium Capacity as of Aug-2019)?  

Thanks again.  ~James

[Seth_C_Bauer]

@Jkaelin Yes, that is how they could connect. And yes it is my understanding that this is a premium feature.

[Jkaelin]

@Seth_C_Bauer  This feature sounds exciting!  Hopefully Microsoft moves this feature to Pro license users sometime soon.