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Category: Power BI

Contrasting Lakehouse, Warehouse, and Datamart in Fabric & Power BI

Published 2023-06-12 by Kevin Feasel

Reza Rad disambiguates three terms:

Three types of objects in the Microsoft Fabric have similarities in what they can do for an analytics system. These three are; Lakehouse, Data Warehouse, and Power BI Datamart. All three objects provide storage for the data, which can be loaded into them using an ETL process and read using something like a Power BI report. In this article and video, I’ll explain the actual differences and how to choose the best option for your implementation and architecture.

Reza does a good job explaining when each of the three fit in and even has a nice chart to work out which one you might want to use.

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What’s New in Power BI: May 2023 Edition

Published 2023-06-09 by Kevin Feasel

Ronald Kraijesteijn talks about some of the more interesting updates:

In May 2023, Microsoft announced a series of updates and new features to its Power BI platform, aiming to improve user experience, accessibility, and performance. As a skilled blog writer, I will provide you with a comprehensive summary of these updates, covering all areas from reporting and modeling to embedded capabilities and accessibility improvements.

There’s a lot on this list to check out.

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Power BI: Unable to Access the Dataset

Published 2023-06-09 by Kevin Feasel

Nicky van Vroenhoven troubleshoots an error:

I opened a report with a Live connection to a dataset and I was presented with the error below:

We encountered an error while trying to connect.

Details: “Looks like we’re unable to access the dataset. Please contact the owner of the dataset.”

Read on for the answer to this. And if that doesn’t work, the next question is, do you actually have rights to the dataset?

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Creating a Hierarchy for Power BI Field Parameters

Published 2023-06-08 by Kevin Feasel

Gilbert Quevauvilliers needs a simpler method for navigation:

I was working with a customer where they had a lot of measures which they wanted to use with the awesome Field parameters for measures.

The challenge was that there was a LOT of measures, and I wanted to see if there was a way to create a hierarchy in my field parameters so that it would be easier to find the measure.

Click through to see how you can group field parameters.

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Speeding up a Power BI Report via Constant Line

Published 2023-06-08 by Kevin Feasel

Nikola Ilic tries something different:

Essentially, the idea here is, since these four lines are not changing based on the numbers in the visual itself (they have constant value based on the slicer selection), to leverage the Constant line feature from the Analytics panel. Since no Constant line is available with Line and clustered column chart visual, let’s duplicate our visual and change its type to a regular Clustered column chart.

This is a good reminder that the best outcome isn’t always the most straightforward one.

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Deploying to Multiple Power BI Dataset Environments

Published 2023-06-07 by Kevin Feasel

Richard Swinbank configures some deployments:

In earlier posts in this series, I talked about to developing and deploying standalone Power BI datasets and automating report deployment into different environments. I’ll bring together those approaches in this post, to enable deployment of shared datasets into multiple environments. This has consequences for automated report deployment, and I’ll take a look at that too.

Read the whole thing.

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Monitoring Datasets with Log Analytics for Power BI

Published 2023-06-07 by Kevin Feasel

Chris Webb has had a busy month:

Maybe the fourth- or fifth-most exciting Power BI-related announcement last month (admittedly it was an exciting month) was that Log Analytics for Power BI datasets is now GA and you can now link multiple Power BI workspaces to a single Log Analytics workspace. This, for me, means that enabling Log Analytics has gone from being useful to essential for anyone interested in monitoring Analysis Services engine activity in an enterprise Power BI/Fabric deployment. It also works with Direct Lake datasets too!

Read on for a few KQL queries which allow you to get pertinent information from your Log Analytics workspace.

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Performing Linear Regression in Power BI

Published 2023-06-06 by Kevin Feasel

Marco Russo and Alberto Ferrari build a regression:

LINEST and LINESTX are two DAX functions that calculate a linear regression by using the Least Squares method. Both functions return multiple values, represented in a table that has a single row and one column for each of the values returned.

LINEST gets column references as arguments, whereas LINESTX explicitly iterates over the table provided in the first argument and executes the other arguments in a row context. Internally, LINEST invokes LINESTX and provides to it the table that contains the column references specified in the LINEST arguments. This article describes the more generic function LINESTX.

This is pretty neat for adding a visual element, though I’d probably include an R or Python visual and do the regression in there, myself.

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Contrasting Power BI Import and DirectQuery Modes

Published 2023-05-29 by Kevin Feasel

Jason Cockington digs into the two modes:

Over the last few months, I have received a number of very similar questions at either one of our Live Training courses or from a student attending one of our Ask Anything Power BI Q&A sessions.  These questions all revolved around DirectQuery and were often specifically about performance issues or complexity of DAX calculations being written on the Power BI reports.  This prompted me to write this post, as it became abundantly clear that most students were opting for DirectQuery when they should have been selecting Import.  If you are not sure if DirectQuery is right for you, then read on, as we explore further.

Jason includes some Real Talk from Chris Webb, fairly eviscerating DirectQuery mode in the majority of cases.

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Microsoft Fabric for the Power BI Practitioner

Published 2023-05-25 by Kevin Feasel

Kurt Buhler provides a nice graphic:

I’m just writing this quick article to share a visual overview I made of the newly announced Power BI-related features. I hope it helps you get an at-a-glance overview of some of the big changes relevant to Power BI. More importantly, I hope it doesn’t make you feel overwhelmed! For more information, check out the documentation and learning paths.

There is a lot in store for the platform, but you can already see a slew of new changes and opportunities for Power BI developers.

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