Power BI Confusion

Just a quick post on some Power BI material that I believe should reach as many people as possible. I get the notion there is a lot of confusion about what is possible in Power BI v2 and which features are supported in the free and in the paying version. (I gave a session on Power BI to make it less confusing, but I primarily talked about all the different Power BI Excel add-ins and their capabilities.) What’s particularly hard to follow is the data refresh / live connections / personal gateway / data management gateway scenarios.

Luckily John White (blog | twitter) wrote an excellent overview: The New Power BI Personal Gateway – Do I Need It?. His blog post details what you can do with the personal gateway and the (older) data management gateway. Recommended reading!

After reading the article, I had some follow-up questions:

@Ko_Ver @diverdown1964 Yes, only SSAS Tabular is supported for live connections

— Christopher Webb (@Technitrain) July 14, 2015

And some more:

@Ko_Ver @Technitrain – You need a license for on-prem refresh of any kind… only cloud sources are supported for the free version — John White (@diverdown1964) July 14, 2015

And even more:

@Ko_Ver @Technitrain – That means “Go get the data model, Power Queries, and Power views”. U can refresh for free if they are cloud sources

— John White (@diverdown1964) July 14, 2015

The general conclusion:

@Ko_Ver @diverdown1964 I think we all feel like that. I made that point to @idigdata the other day… — Christopher Webb (@Technitrain) July 14, 2015

If you have the time, read the entire Twitter conversation; it’s really interesting. We were talking about this, to be precise:

My point of this post? There is a lot of confusion about Power BI and its capabilities out there. If you’re confused as well, you’re not alone!

ps: this doesn’t mean Power BI is an awful product though. Just the documentation 🙂

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