Any inherent or practical limits to the complexity or number of SQL tables Power BI can navigate?

[gitouttatown]

I have a situation where a database I wish to connect Power BI to has more than 17,000 tables.  I can connect to this database using a basic SQL client (SQuirreL) and make queries, but when I connect using Power BI, it is erroring right now because the schema data PBI seeks from the database, is not yet represented (not all system tables have been built). Before we embark on the work to flesh out all the system tables needed, I am wondering if anybody has experience connecting to such a complex schema? Has anybody used Power BI to successfully connect to a SQL database with >10,000 tables? It's not that the database itself is so huge, it's that the data model is complex. The "Get Data" process presents a navigator which allows browsing the tables found, previewing them and selecting the ones needed. I wonder if that will choke on a schema with so many tables and relationships.

This would be "import mode" - I'm not expecting to do a live query.

I've tried searching in many places for answers and have found nothing about this issue. Lots of people have very large databases to connect to, but I have not found answers addressing this particular issue of the complexity of the data model in the source db.

Thanks in advance for any help you may have.

[jsaunders_zero9]

I have succesfully connected Power BI to a number of ERP and CRM systems that are large and complex. One thing that I will say is the visual editor you are talking about becomes slow and unresponsive as things get more complicated, in these cases you might be best hand authoring SQL queiries.

[amitchandak]

@gitouttatown , In import mode it should not stop you from creating schema. Hope you do not plan to bring all 17K tables. Seem like there is still a issue to list tables - refer -https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Desktop/10-000-tables-joined-limit/m-p/772754

You can write a query in the advance option and get the table data.

example

Select * from dbo.abc