When to avoid (all) automatic relationship links in Power BI

[DAXux]

While Power BI's cross-filter autolink/direction links make it easy, especially for beginners, to get basic graphics and quick, easy charts, it seems that these "autolinks" soon cause more problems than they're worth. I see a lot of DAX being used to bypass this default "auto" behavior, and I wonder if I'm better off leaving everything "off".

Are there superusers out there who advocate "disconnected" development because that allows for precisely defined object behavior without unforeseen side effects?

In which cases is a better route (the only one?)?

Thank you

[Greg_Deckler · Accepted solution]

I would have to look deeper into your issue but like most things, it depends. There are certain patterns that work very well with disconnected tables and are in fact the only way to create a particular effect. However, most of the times, relationships between tables are a very good thing, they are orders of magnitude more efficient than filtering in DAX. The general rule, try to get as close to a star schema as possible. You can't always achieve that with all data but that's the goal. 

Personally, I tend to leave the auto-relationship stuff in place and only override it when I need to. Most times, it does a decent job of figuring out the relationships between things.