Power BI Tutorial: 4 Ways To Get Data

In this Power BI tutorial, Adam looks at 4 ways to get data in Power BI. This focuses on Power BI Desktop and the main storage modes - Import, DirectQuery and Live Connections to Analysis Services. If you are new to Power BI, be sure to check out this Power BI Tutorial: 4 ways to get data.

Import (Excel) [01:46:21]

Import (SQL) [04:28:17]

DirectQuery (SQL) [06:48:07]

Live Connection (Analysis Services Tabular) [10:10:08]

Service/Push/Streaming [12:13:20]

DirectQuery Documentation:

LET'S CONNECT!

Guy in a Cube
-- Snapchat - guyinacube

***Gear***

[timtunbridge]

Hi Adam

We’ve recently set up a full MS data warehouse stack. We replicate Dynamics 365 online to Azure and four times a day run Azure Data Factory to populate an Azure SQL data warehouse. After watching Patrick’s video on data silo’s we decided to use Power BI to define subject area models which we publish to the Power BI Service, and from there use live connection to build/publish Power BI reports.

Sure there are some considerations with this approach, but it’s a pretty sweet set up. It gives us control of the back end, a consistent shared model and it suits our users really well.

I appreciate all that you and Patrick do for us and the community.

[yoshihirokawabataify]

Nice Tutorial for Get Data.
I like all way, Nice Import with PowerQuery, Nice DirectQuery with SQL Server and Azure SQL Database, Nice Connect to Power BI Service on small PC, Nice Streaming Dataset for real-time update scenario.

[maikeramos]

Hi!
this was a good explanation, but I believe the most widely used model today is importing, but I believe that directquery is important in some cases. it would be a good idea to explain how updating scheduled importing works with one permission gateway.
Thanks for the video ;)

[abhishekkhard]

Hi Guys !! Thank you for giving so cool information about PowerBI. I am a beginner in PowerBI but a expert in Tableau, want to master PowerBI as well. Can you guys please make a video on da-100 beta certification, is it worth appearing in beta version or shall we wait ?
Also, if you can post some videos where can we practise on PowerBI service for free . Thanks again !! Keep rocking !!

[AntonMllerApm]

very nice overview using direct query for most cases, could be analyse service could be actual i the longer therm

[rpatel]

awesome as always, how can i get live stream visuals and dashboard by using azure sql database ? i have tried direct query for now but it takes atlist 15min to refresh data. is there any other solution that get me data refresh rate as much faster ?

[Disaenz]

Hi, what if I change the name of the excel but it contains the same structure? Does it work when I refresh?


thanks.

[mathew]

Hi Adam,

Nice video as always - I was just wondering, was there any mention of query folding? it would be create to have a cheat sheet to show the pro/cons of each connection type

Please keep up the GREAT work :-)

[kendrajrobl]

I'm looking to have data refreshed on a daily basis in Power BI from an SAP data source.  Is direct query the right method to or is this function not available in Power BI?

[smarguin]

Hi Adam! For me another very interesting way to get data in Power BI is to use Flow. I do that for example to pick tweets from twitter or videos on you tube and push them to a dataset. Would love to be able to push to datapool (CDS-A) directly though!

[samrevak]

We are almost 100% Import to take full advantage of all the Power BI features/functionality available. We do have some live connections to power bi datasets for consistent yet agile reporting without duplicating work; however, those datasets always start off as imports.

[abhinavkumar]

Hi
Dual storage supports Referential integrity?, as direct query support it??

[rajatsood]

Hi Adam, The data size is getting more than 1 GB and i am using Power BI pro license, is there anyway i can do something where i can change my approach in loading data from FILE to power BI may be parameterizing ?( i dont want to use premium license and Analysis approach )

[aks]

How we schedule refresh in PowerBI if my data source in HDFS? In live connection when I connected to Azure HDInsight then we can schedule refresh in 15 minutes but can we do the same when my data source is HDFS?

[eve]

Is direct query available for cds/d365?

[sergiussarmose]

do a data scientist/analyst make application for user too or just proccess the data and user just get the result?

[campillo]

hi Adam

I have a problem, i am trying to make an automatic power BI which should get the data from any source (excel, sql, access DB) of course with the same format of data tables(columns and/or querys) and make the same kind of charts or diagrams, could it be possible?
it would be so nice iof you could help me out.

[diito]

Q: I have made a power bi file several months ago that includes several different files and now i can't find one of my imported sheets. How can i find it?

[tariqkal]

I have a question:
I am using powerbi in my company with direct query but the limitation with direct query is the if powerbi gateway service is not running that our users are unable to retrieve data and reporting shows the error message.

Is there any possibility that we create a schedule that update the dataset of powerbi. So when user check the report or dashboard it will bring data from powerbi cloud dataset which will be updated by the scheduler after every particular interval.

Regards, waiting for your response. thanks

[ryanwade]

I was waiting to here about the R script option. I need to do a better job of getting the word out about that extremely valuable but very underused feature in Power BI:-)