PowerBI DirectQuery to Kerberised Impala + bug

[stuartjmccoll]

Hi

Does PowerBI support DirectQuery for Impala sitting on a kerberised hadoop cluster?

From what I can understand the answer is no (referring to: https://ideas.powerbi.com/forums/265200-power-bi-ideas/suggestions/15949948-support-kerberos-authent...) but I figured I would check here. 

On a related note, I have tested on a non-kerberised Impala, and with DirectQuery I am able to see the list of all tables, but as soon as I try and connect I get an error saying ("We cannot convert the value null to Type Table"). Is this a known bug?

[fabiothomaz]

While the support for DirectQuery in a Kerberos enabled environment isn't released, you can configure your Impala service to authenticate with LDAP.

The impala service will use the authenticated LDAP user for authorization (sentry) and the impala service principal to access the cluster resources.

With this configuration, we're able to use DirectQuery + Impala + Kerberos.

You can find more about Impala LDAP authentication at:

https://www.cloudera.com/documentation/enterprise/latest/topics/impala_ldap.html

Regards,

Fabio Thomaz

[v-yuezhe-msft · Accepted solution]

@stuartjmccoll,

Yes, this is a known issue for some connectors. Fix is planned in February release of Power BI Desktop on Feb 5th, 2018.

In your scenario, check if you can use previous Power BI Desktop to connect to Impala with DirectQuery mode.



Regards,
Lydia

[stuartjmccoll]

Hi

It works fine with Import mode

For DirectQuery I can see that there are multiple people raising similar issues:

https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Issues/POWERBI-DIRECT-QUERY-HAS-STOPPED-WORKING/idi-p/335590

https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Issues/Power-BI-January-release-2-54-is-not-working-when-source-is-...

https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Issues/DirectQuery-Refresh-Broken-update-january-2018/idi-p/335145

So, I think this issue is also affecting Impala.

[v-yuezhe-msft]

@stuartjmccoll,

Firstly, Kerberos authentication is currently not supported, please vote up the idea you mentioned.

Secondly, do you get any errors if you use import mode to connect to Impala?

Regards,
Lydia