Notice: the Data and Relationships icons are not visible after making a Live Connection. Most limiting of all in terms of disabling Power BI features.That being said, lets dive into the details of what a centralized model gives us, and the pros & cons of the Power BI Live Connection. SQL Server Analysis Services Tabular is the typical implementation that I see most often employed due to the relational nature, compression, in memory storage and speed. This centralized approach is imperative in order for large scale BI initiatives to be successful. The evolution of a Power BI solution “should” typically land in a space where a centralized or several centralized models are being used as the backbone for the vast majority of Power BI reports. You can deploy a single dataset to the Service and re-use it to build multiple reports! Having your own instance of Analysis Services on premises or Azure lets you maximize your development and deployment efforts and truly create a sustainable reporting solution. In fact, each time you build a Power BI report in the Desktop, you are building a Tabular model that is then created in the cloud upon publish! This live connection method allows you to gain a bit more control. Anyone who uses the “Power BI Service” connector that was first made available in April 2017 and released to GA in August 2017 is using a live connection to an Analysis Services Instance hosted in in your Power BI tenant. The live connection is the most powerful of all the connections that Power BI has to offer in my opinion.īefore we dive into the deep stuff, are you aware that you can use this connection type without your own instance of Analysis Services? Let me explain. In fact, this topic was my first blog on Power BI so long ago ( here for those feeling nostalgic). I’m a big fan of doing things one time, and having one version that controls many reports is extremely appealing. I imagine it is because I come from the database developer side of things.

Of all the connection types, I’ve always gravitated towards this one.

Controlling live visuals