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jPinhao
Helper II
Helper II

Direct Query Source in Import Data mode - Pro licence?

We've just changed how our Power BI service acquires data, and it's now directly connected to an Azure SQL Database. Now when I try to access it in teh portal I get a notice saying something along the lines "This report contains Power BI PRO content" - we don't have PRO licences, so we can't properly use the portal.

 

I looked up the Pro definition, and the first line is:

Data from a DirectQuery dataset, such as SQL Server Analysis Services tabular data, Azure SQL Database, Azure SQL Data Warehouse, or Apache Spark for HDInsight

 

We are using an Azure SQL Database, but we're not actually using DirectQuery, we are importing the data into the report. Should this still require a Pro licence, or am I missing something?  

 

If the content is indeed intended to be Pro even if the data loading method is 'Import', what other options do I have? Would Azure Table Storage also require a Pro licence? Would it be slower to load the report using it? 

 

EDIT: It seems that if I turn off a scheduled daily refresh, the Pro notice goes away. However that same page says you only need a Pro licence to schedule hourly refreshes - Daily seems fine. The notes in the Power BI Pro page also seems to point that daily refreshes are fine. I have done a couple of manual refreshes in the last 24h for testing purposes, but I don't imagine this would be the issue.

4 REPLIES 4
v-qiuyu-msft
Community Support
Community Support

Hi @jPinhao,

 

In Power BI, get data from Azure SQL database doesn't require Pro license. But if you want to refresh this dataset frequently more than daily, it requires Pro license. Please refer to this article: Data refresh by subscription type.

 

Best Regards,
Qiuyun Yu

Community Support Team _ Qiuyun Yu
If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

Thanks @v-qiuyu-msft, this is what I thought. How come I'm seeing this Pro notice then? If I turn off the daily refresh everything is good, but with it enabled the report won't load.

 

This is a slight inconvenience as it means I have to go to the portal and hit refresh myself every morning.

 

daily_refresh.JPG

 

That is how I have set-up the refresh. As you can see it is a pretty standard daily refresh, not more than daily, and yet the service seems to think the dataset has Pro content 😞

Hi @jPinhao,

 

Please double check based on this article to verify this report doesn't contain any Pro content.

 

Did you connect to another data source in this report? Based on my test, if use one query connect to the Azure SQL database in Import mode without any RLS enabled, after publish to the service and enable schedule refresh, report can be loaded fine. Would you please share the detail steps for our analysis?

 

Best Regards,
Qiuyun Yu

Community Support Team _ Qiuyun Yu
If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

@v-qiuyu-msft, we're not connecting to any other source no. The only data loading step we have is:

 

Source = Sql.Database(Server, Database, [CreateNavigationProperties=false])

 

Where Server and  Database are 2 parameters. We've had issues iwth paramters in the data source query step, but that was related to static analysis not knowing where to get the data from, and it wouldn't refresh at all (not what's happenign now). 

 

The rest of the queries just follow on from this 'Load Data' query, navigating to a particular table and doing some transformations. In one of the query tables we do a Join with another table (from the same project), but I don't imagine this should be an issue either:

MergeExistingSessionsLicence = Table.NestedJoin(dbo_Fact_SessionRun, {"session_id"}, ExistingSessionsLicence, {"session_id"}, "Licence", JoinKind.LeftOuter),

 

As I mentioned, if I turn off the automatic refresh everything is fine. The issue only really shows itself with automatic refresh turned on. None of the other points in the link you posted (which I read before) don't sound applicable to our case. The issue really seems to be with the automatic refresh.

 

Could it be a potential bug with the automatic refresh? I've just tried setting it up to work every other day using the 'Weekly' option, and that still throws up a Pro warning.

 

Is there a way to share this dataset/report with a msft representative?

 

EDIT: I can't seem to do manual refreshes in the portal either now. The refresh notification very briefly appear on teh top right of the browser, but it immediately disappears and the dataset never gets the loading spinner next to it's name. I'm having to refresh this manually in teh desktop version and publish to the portal.

 

EDIT 2: Seems like the inability to do manual refreshes in the portal was just a glitch - this is now working again 🙂

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