Dataflows and accessing with Power BI desktop. Where does the data sit?

[DebbieE]

I am doing some work for someone and I want to make sure I am telling them the correct information

I am going to sign in to their Power BI service with the email they have given me and we are going to set up a dataflow with data from an excel spreadsheet

that data is then held in their own Power BI secure tabular database in the cloud and not on my machine.

Then, I log into my Power BI Desktop, and Get Data from the Dataflow. I want to make sure that at this point the data stays in the Power BI Service Tabular model, and doesnt get cashed in memory on my machine.

If this was the case we would have to rethink the entire process, because they dont want the data on my own computer.

Any help on this would be really appreciated

Debbie

[MFelix]

Hi @DebbieE ,

This is a blog about performance but references the cache part, so maybe you can have additional information about what you need.

https://blog.crossjoin.co.uk/2016/11/20/referenced-queries-and-caching-in-power-bi-and-power-query/

[DebbieE]

Im struggling to get what I need from your blog which is in regard to dataflows

Basically, If Im getting data from a dataflow, does the data stay in Service. the data doesnt get cached in memory on my machine?

[MFelix · Accepted solution]

Hi @DebbieE ,

I looked a little better on the documentation and they refer:

DirectQuery: Tables with this setting aren't cached. Queries that you submit to the Power BI dataset—for example, DAX queries—and that return data from DirectQuery tables can be fulfilled only by executing on-demand queries to the data source. Queries that you submit to the data source use the query language for that data source, for example, SQL.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/desktop-storage-mode#use-the-storage-mode-property

Since Dataflows work on direct query they will not be cached on your computer. Check the link I send up with a further explanations on the connections and the way they are cached.