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Category: Power BI

Power BI and Information Protection in the Enterprise

Published 2021-08-11 by Kevin Feasel

Marc Lelijveld continues a series on taking Power BI to the enterprise level:

On to the next topic, which is super important for global, enterprise grade solutions if you ask me. Security and information protection! The fifth blog in the series of transforming local into global Power BI solutions.

Good to know up front is that information protection is a feature that not specifically related to Power BI, but also applies to other Microsoft products and services. Though, in this blog I will explain the functionality of information protection, also known as sensitivity labels and how this applies to Power BI. Let’s first look at what the functionality is, where you can apply it and why it is important.

Read on for more information concerning sensitivity labels and where they become useful.

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Row Level Security in Azure Analysis Services and Power BI PPU

Published 2021-08-11 by Kevin Feasel

Gilbert Quevauvilliers continues a series on moving from Azure Analysis Services to Power BI Premium Per User:

In this blog post I am going to cover how to implement Row Level Security (RSL) when using AAS and how this can be done on PPU.

In my example below I am going to show creating to simple RLS roles which will limit data for the users who belong to 2 roles.

Despite the simplification, we can see how row-level security applies to both products and how the two differ.

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Representing Dates in Power BI: Date or Integer?

Published 2021-08-05 by Kevin Feasel

Marco Russo and Alberto Ferrari share their take on a classic debate:

A question that is often asked during the design of a Power BI data model is whether it is better to use an Integer or a Datetime column to link a fact table with the Date dimension. Historically, using Integers has always been a better choice in database design. However, Tabular is an in-memory columnar database, and its architecture is quite different from the relational databases we might be used to working with.

Indeed, in Tabular there are no technical differences between using a Datetime or an Integer to create a relationship. The database size, the query speed, and any other technical detail are absolutely identical. Therefore, the choice is not related to technical aspects, but rather on the convenience of the design. Depending on the specific requirements of your model, you might favor one data type against the other. In the most common scenarios, a Datetime proves to be better because it provides more possibilities to compute values on dates without having to rely on relationships. With that said, if your model uses Integers and you do not need to perform calculations on the dates represented in the table, then you can choose the most convenient data type – that is, the one already used in the original data source.

The remaining part of the article aims to prove the previous sentences, and to provide you with the technical details about how we tested the respective performance of the two options.

Click through for Marco and Alberto’s analysis, noting that “date” here does not include time of day, so it would have the same cardinality as the integer date key. This was a more important thing fifteen years ago, before columnstore technologies (like columnstore indexes and VertiPaq) were readily available and that 4-byte integer was considerably smaller than an 8-byte DATETIME.

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Deploying Datasets in Azure Analysis Services and Power BI PPU

Published 2021-08-05 by Kevin Feasel

Gilbert Quevauvilliers continues a series on migrating from Azure Analysis Services to Power BI Premium Per User:

Welcome to part 8, where in this blog post, I am going compare deploying datasets.

For those people who are not exactly sure what deployments are, what this means is when you are using Power BI Desktop and you click on Publish, you are effectively deploying your changes to the Power BI Service (Which could also be a server in the cloud).

In this blog post I will show the differences when completing a deployment from AAS and then PPU.

Read on to see several techniques for deploying for each technology.

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Handling Content Access Requests in Power BI

Published 2021-07-30 by Kevin Feasel

Marc Lelijveld walks us through the process of requesting (and granting) access to content in Power BI:

When we look at the Power BI ecosystem, we can identify a bunch of different artifacts. For example, dataflows, datasets, reports, dashboards and many derivatives. As I explained in the previous post, the best practice for sharing content is through a Power BI App, which includes a list of users or active directory group containing multiple users. With that, the content becomes available after publishing to those who are granted access. Though, it can happen that one of the users shares the link with other users who do not have access to the content. As a property of the Power BI App, you can allow users to share the app and underlying dataset with share permissions. Though, working with sensitive data this might now be what you are looking for, as you might loose control over who has access.

Read on to see what constitutes a content access request and what you can do about them.

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Differences in Power BI PPU Models vs Azure Analysis Services

Published 2021-07-28 by Kevin Feasel

Gilbert Quevauvilliers continues a series on migrating from Azure Analysis Services to Power BI Premium Per User:

When creating a new dataset in AAS this is typically done with Visual Studio, there are a lot of similar items between Visual Studio and Power BI desktop, the biggest difference is how you access them are very different as well as their look and feel.

When starting with a new dataset the process is to create a new data source, import some data and then to create the tables.

Click through for the differences. This is one area where Power BI drags in comparison to Azure Analysis Services.

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Connecting to Azure Blob Storage from Power BI

Published 2021-07-27 by Kevin Feasel

Kristyna Hughes links Power BI to a data source:

The step-by-step process below walks through connecting to data housed in Azure Blob Storage from Power BI using a SAS token. There are many ways to grab your data from Blob Storage, but this is the most efficient, scalable, and secure way that I found (with some security restrictions from watchful DBAs).

Click through for the solution, which is based on using SAS tokens.

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Working with Complex Return Types in Power Query

Published 2021-07-26 by Kevin Feasel

Gerhard Brueckl works with some complex data:

When working with Power Query, you have probably already realized that every expression you write returns a value of a specific type. Usually this will be a primitive type like text, number, or date. (A full list of types available in Power Query can be found here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powerquery-m/m-spec-types). If for some reason the type of an expression cannot be defined, the special type *any* will be used. For sure you already encountered this when using Table.AddColumn which, by default, results in the new column being of type *any*.

Read on to learn more, including what you can do if you’re creating Power Query functions.

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Detecting a Fraud: Power BI Edition

Published 2021-07-26 by Kevin Feasel

Brett Powell has an interesting post on determining a Power BI consultant’s chops:

This post discusses the forms, origins, and indications of fraud and misrepresentation in the context of Power BI consulting and contract engagements. The intent of this content is to help the reader determine whether a fraud or misrepresentation has occurred and identify characteristics that suggest the potential for a significant variance between expectations and deliverables.

Brett comes at this from the viewpoint of an expert sharing information on the types of things you should expect to see from a qualified consultant. Incidentally, this also works to give you an idea of the types of skills necessary to become a Power BI consultant so if that’s your goal, study this and you’ll be in a solid mindset—especially because this isn’t just a knowledge quiz.

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