PowerBI connection to a Gateway Datasource

[Vetri]

I am a bit new to using Gateway server. While I can set up and connect, the documentation stops at setting up the datasources, and doesn't explain how exactly the connection is made from a published dataset to the gateway.

Does the gateway server take the data source connection used in the desktop, and automatically identify the gateway source that has the same connection?  This is my understanding, please correct me if I'm wrong.

If that's the case, what are some of the implemenation strategies that you (experts here) use?

As in promoting from a development environment to test and production environment; at the least, creating with a DEV datasource and then publishing or changing to a production datasource.

Do we have to create/change the connections for each environment in the desktop and republish?

I was hoping to publish once, and "point" to a test or production datasource as needed. Is that possible somehow?

Thanks

Vetri

[v-yuezhe-msft · Accepted solution]

@Vetri,

Gateway is used in the scenarios that you want to refresh on-premises data sources in Power BI Service and you connect to DirectQuery/Live data sources in Power BI reports. For more information about how gateway works, please review the following articles.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/service-gateway-getting-started
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/service-gateway-onprem-indepth

When changing from Dev to test and production environment, you would need to firstly change data source in Power BI Desktop. And all the data sources(dev/test/production) should be added within gateway if you want to test the refresh of relevant datasets in Power BI Service.


Regards,
Lydia