gateway data source to ssas tabular prespective

[Anonymous]

Hi Guys,

How to specify a prespective within an on premise data source (tabular cube) configred on power bi service ? I can conenct to the on primse tabular cube but I can't seem to workout where to specify the prespective I have on the tabular cube.

any help would be appriciated.

Thanks.

[MattAllington]

You don't specify it in the gateway. Create your workbook in Power BI Desktop connected to SSAS. Before you publish it to Power BI, You can edit the cube and the perspective using "edit connections". Each time you republish, you can select a different cube and/or perspective if you like

[Anonymous]

Thanks for yout reply Matt. However we need to give access to some users in power bi service and they will create reoport there in service report editor in browser not from their desktop, and we wanted to have these users restrictive access the some attributes in the cubes diemnsion, so we created a prespective but it doesn't seem like while creating a data source in gateway we can specify a precpective.

Is this true ? or do we have a way to specify this in gateway ?

thanks

[MattAllington]

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@Anonymous wrote:

....they will create reoport there in service report editor in browser not from their desktop

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I don't see any issue here.

option 1) IF you could (but you can't) you connect to a model and perspective from the service. You give people access to build reports in the service.  

Option 2) which you can do.  Create the connection in power bi desktop and connect to the perspective. Then publish to the service with the perspective connected. You then give people access to build reports in the service as you would above. 

There is no difference.  Either way, when you author in the service, There is no way to back up the work they do, which is why I don't do it. 

[Seth_C_Bauer]

@MattAllington I was thinking the same thing, but with option 2 - this still gives the end user access to potentially get access to the entire model. Because, presumably, the Service data source would be to the model (as it can't be to the perspective). So all the end user would need to do is change the desktop connection to the model and publish. (hypathetically...)

This also brings up another question in my mind. If the Desktop treats the perspective as a seperate data source... does this even work in the Service since the approved data source is pointed at the model?.. Doesn't seem to align with how things are set up.

[MattAllington]

Well the Service definitely presents the perspective to the user, but I also believe the user has the potential to get to the entire model (which is why I suggested row level security earlier).  But if access to additional columns is a security issue too, then that is a different (and I believe unsolvablve at this time ) issue.

There is no issue with users publishing the desktop model, as they must be administrators of the Gateway to be able to do this.  So in this use case, you would not want to give them admin rights to the gateway, and it is also not needed because once the model is published once, it doesn't need to be published again to do what the OP wanted.   However there is still no backup, and that is why I never build any meaningful content in the service

[Seth_C_Bauer]

@Anonymous I haven't tested out the connection to a perspective from the Service, but I would imagine you would have to create a specific data source pointed at the perspective. I would imagine your current data source in the Service is connected to the model.

I say this as the documentation to connect from the Desktop shows the perspective as a seperate "model" to choose under the instance. here

[Anonymous]

@Seth_C_Bauerthat's the problem, there is no option to connect to prespective in gateway when confirguting a new data source.

you can connect from power bi desktop but thats not what we wanted, for instance immagine you selling  a multi tenant solution to customer base and you have a single cube with a prespective, customers will use Power BI service (not desktop) to connect to configured gateway with a data source that connects with on premise ssas tabular prespective...

[Seth_C_Bauer]

@Anonymous Not to derail your initial question, but how do you plan on allowing external customers to access a hosted data source without being a part of your tenant? Or... will they be a part of the tenant, and you are planning on providing them with the connection information so they can create a data set?

[Anonymous]

@Seth_C_Bauer part of tenant, yes create their own reports (conneting to on premise ssas tabular prespective) along with some content packs out of box

[MattAllington]

I have never seen a perspective connection in the gateway, only the way I described above. Also note that the perspective doesn't lock down the cube. Have you considered role/row level security instead?  This will work without he need for perspectives. 

[Anonymous]

@MattAllington RLS will only hide data, we wanted to hide few columns without the need to hide these from SSAS tabular cube, idea is to keep using these columns on premise when we connected locally but for our customers connecting from power bi service we publish a prespective of the cube with those columns hidden.