Formula.Firewall: Query references other queries, so it may not directly access a data source.

[markive]

I am getting the following error:

Formula.Firewall: Query 'Query1' (step 'Added Custom') references other queries or steps, so it may not directly access a data source. Please rebuild this data combination.

In my first query I am accessing an API to get a list of URLs. In the second query it uses this list of URLs to then go back to the API and request all of the data.

I understand what the complaint is, but how do I get around it? I am actually always hitting the same domain for both queries, but maybe it doesn't know that. I suppose it wouldn't know that until runtime.

I have read that in Excel PowerQuery you can go to:

File=>Options and Settings=>Options and set the Ignore Privacy Levels option.

But no such option seems to exist in Powe BI Desktop. Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong or how I can get around this restriction, it seems like a common usage scenario?

[MattAllington · Accepted solution]

Ken Puls blogged about this here

http://www.excelguru.ca/blog/2015/03/11/power-query-errors-please-rebuild-this-data-combination/

[markive]

Hi @MattAllington, thanks for the info.. 

Yes I was able to get around it just now by effectively moving all of the steps from the other query into the same query. This gets around the problem but it's a bit annoying.

[MarkCBB]

@MattAllington Thank you for sharing, the Blog by Ken Puls, saved alot of my hair. (Very frustrating, but the below made sence and helped alot).

[the2nicks]

As far as I'm concerned this is their catch-all, can't cope error message!

I have a spreadsheet with a lot of queries (which create data for sheets in the spreadsheet) and function queries which reference that data and return to other queries, I did it in this way as I had repeatedly run into this error and it was suggested to me that placing the data retrieval in a function would resolve the issue, but it doesn't.

I have several very compliccated scripts which work fine. I just copied a few lines from one of those scripts into a far simpler script
 - call a common function to retreive data from a sheet into a table

 - a function to reference the above table to get a piece of information

 - a call to the above function to get the required piece of information

and, BANG, formula firewall error.

Looking at the message it tells me that the error is in the last step in the script BUT the retrieval of the data is in the previous step!

I stepped through the script and it then failed on the previous step.

The reason it was failing on the final step when I ran the whole script is because M uses a lazy interpretation model which only tries to determine the value of something when it's needed, so in the final step it referened data from the previous step and that's where the problem occurred.

And this is why I think these errors occur all too frequently ... the lazy interpretastion ... I'm sure that if every step were separately processed (and the result stored until the end of the script) that a lot of these errors would not occur ... if memory is an issue then add a command to discard something when it's no longer required.

I've looked at my script and tried to work out what the hell that error message means and how to fix it and I simply don;'t understand ... why does the same kind of processing work fine in another script?

I've had similar problems in other scripts ... I added a parameter sheet to the spreadsheet so that I could change the query results without having to edit the script every time ... retrieving the parameters works fine in most scripts BUT in a couple scripts when I add the step to retrieve the parameters I get the Firewall error  ... surely this is simply a matter of M not being able to cope and throwing out this generic and unhelpful message?

I wish they would fix this.

[the2nicks]

After a couple hours I found a workaround for the problem I was having but it really just confirms what I already think about M.

I found that the problem I was having was NOT down to accesing an external data source (all of my data loads are done in functions) but because I load a table, create two filtered tables from that table and then join them together. Why it would object to that I don't know, but it does ... I suspect (as per my previous post) that it's something to do with the lazy interpretation and it getting confused!

I then moved the splitting and re-joining of the table into a function script and it worked!

I think M / Power Query is a fantastic tool but it needs so many improvements ...

1. Ability to save files from within the Power Query environment ... qiute a few times Excel has hung/crashed when exiting the environment and I have lost hours of work!

2. Ability to export all scripts to text files in a specifed folder.

Would be nice ...

1. The Advanced Editor name is a bit of a joke as it anything but!. Colour-coding and all of that would be nice BUT for starters how about some basic Notepad-style editing features such as Search and Replace?

2. I really wish I could change the editor font size as it is too small, I don't want to have to change all of Window settings just because of this.

3. Environment state. It would be nice if the opened/closed groups stayed opened/closed in Power Query and the Excel sidebar, I constantly have to close the groups I'm not interested in.

[freder1ck]

So, regarding editing of Power Query, I just found out that there's an addon for Power Query in Visual Studio (via Adam Saxton), and just started using it. He also mentioned that there's one for Visual Studio Code as well. 

[rensblom]

Hello all,

I came across this post because I experienced similar error message and followed all the proposed solutions here, but I keep getting the error above. What I try to acomplish is the following: I have a list of F1 drivers with their social media screennames in a SQL table (DimDriver), first I would like to add number of followers, tweets etc from the Twitter API. What I did was follow the oAuth method form this blog https://chris.koester.io/index.php/2015/07/16/get-data-from-twitter-api-with-power-query/ and put it all in a custom function.
Next I made a query referencing my DimDriver( renamed it directly to "twitterdata"), filtered on all driver with a screenname in the table and as a last step I invoked a custom column using the above function. As far as I can see that makes only one external data source, but still no luck. Could it be the custom function?

Any help would be appreciated, the F1 reports are openly available on our companies website for training purposes, if anyone is interested!

The code I used:

let
Source = Twitterdata,
#"Removed Columns" = Table.RemoveColumns(Source,{"Driver", "Reference", "Number", "Code", "Birthdate", "Nationality", "WikipediaURL", "Hashtag last name", "Hashtag code", "Facebook", "Instagram"}),
#"Filtered Rows" = Table.SelectRows(#"Removed Columns", each ([Twitter] <> null)),
#"Split Column by Delimiter" = Table.SplitColumn(#"Filtered Rows", "Twitter", Splitter.SplitTextByDelimiter("@", QuoteStyle.Csv), {"Twitter.1", "Twitter.2"}),
#"Changed Type" = Table.TransformColumnTypes(#"Split Column by Delimiter",{{"Twitter.1", type text}, {"Twitter.2", type text}}),
#"Removed Columns1" = Table.RemoveColumns(#"Changed Type",{"Twitter.1"}),
#"Invoked Custom Function" = Table.AddColumn(#"Removed Columns1", "TwitterFunction", each TwitterFunction([Twitter.2]))
in
#"Invoked Custom Function"

Many thanks in advance!

Rens

[the2nicks]

It's hard (for me) to tell without seeing it "properly" but there doesn't seem to be anything wrong.

The only thing I can say is that I now have ALL data loads in separate functions ... I added a function which gets passed a sheet/range name and it loads the data.

I see that you have Source=Twitterdata ... what is Twitterdata, it doesn't seem to be a function as it doesn't have () closing brackets.

Apart from that this is a simple script which I would have hand-coded as a single multi-line statement so I'm rather puzzled.

Hope you sort it out. Good luck.

[rensblom]

Hey the2nicks,

Actually TwitterData is referring to another Query, the function is invoked on the last line 

#"Invoked Custom Function" = Table.AddColumn(#"Removed Columns1", "TwitterFunction", each TwitterFunction([Twitter.2]))

The code for the function is:

let FxGetTwitterUserData = (ScreenName as text) =>

let
 authKey = "Basic " & Binary.ToText(Text.ToBinary("<<here are my twitter API keys ;-)>>"),0),
 url = "https://api.twitter.com/oauth2/token",
 GetJson = Web.Contents(url,
     [
         Headers = [#"Authorization"=authKey,
                    #"Content-Type"="application/x-www-form-urlencoded;charset=UTF-8"],
         Content = Text.ToBinary("grant_type=client_credentials") 
     ]
 ),
 FormatAsJson = Json.Document(GetJson),
 AccessToken = FormatAsJson[access_token],
 AccessTokenHeader = "bearer " & AccessToken,
 GetJsonQuery = Web.Contents("https://api.twitter.com/1.1/users/lookup.json?cursor=-1&screen_name="&ScreenName,
     [
         Headers = [#"Authorization"=AccessTokenHeader]
     ]
 ),
 FormatAsJsonQuery = Json.Document(GetJsonQuery),
    FormatAsJsonQuery1 = FormatAsJsonQuery{0},
    #"Converted to Table" = Record.ToTable(FormatAsJsonQuery1),
    #"Filtered Rows" = Table.SelectRows(#"Converted to Table", each ([Name] = "description" or [Name] = "favourites_count" or [Name] = "followers_count" or [Name] = "following" or [Name] = "follow_request_sent" or [Name] = "friends_count" or [Name] = "screen_name" or [Name] = "status" or [Name] = "statuses_count" or [Name] = "url")),
    #"Transposed Table" = Table.Transpose(#"Filtered Rows"),
    #"Promoted Headers" = Table.PromoteHeaders(#"Transposed Table", [PromoteAllScalars=true]),
    #"Changed Type" = Table.TransformColumnTypes(#"Promoted Headers",{{"screen_name", type text}, {"description", type text}, {"url", type text}, {"followers_count", Int64.Type}, {"friends_count", Int64.Type}, {"favourites_count", Int64.Type}, {"statuses_count", Int64.Type}, {"status", type any}, {"following", type any}, {"follow_request_sent", type any}})
in
    #"Changed Type"
in
    FxGetTwitterUserData

Of course it's nicer to hand code, but this was (I think) the 4th try to get it working, so I'll clean up later

Thanks for your reply