Skip to main content
cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Earn the coveted Fabric Analytics Engineer certification. 100% off your exam for a limited time only!

Reply
RubySmith
Frequent Visitor

Do Power BI Report Builder reports get real time data from server? (no refresh wait time)

Hi, 

 

Apologies in advance - novice here. We have operational reports built in Power BI Desktop, where the data refreshes / syncs to the server to reflect updates every hour (not ideal for real time analysis). 

 

The reports just need to be basically point in time static reports that can be intentionally re-run after updates have been made. Is this how a report built in the "PowerBI Report Builder" tool (as opposed to Power BI Desktop) would work (if data souce is our Azure database)? 

 

My very limited understanding is that "Power BI Report Builder is optimized for working with RDL Reports in Power BI Service".

 

RDL reports = server reports, "RDL is an XML application primarily used with Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services" so it would pick up data directly from the server and not the "cached / local memory of Power BI that gets refreshed every hour"?

 

*Also a little confused with the above as you can select the database as a data source in the basic Power BI dashboard reports but it references the cached / stored in Power BI memory data that needs refreshes, not referencing the raw data itself.

 

 

I've heard of the two Power BI Dashboard workarounds DirectQuery and upgrading to the Premium service but looking for all options first.

 

Thanks in advance

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION
V-pazhen-msft
Community Support
Community Support

@RubySmith 

Two things you need to know:

Power BI Report Server do not have much relationship with PBI Service.

Power BI Report Builder is a tool for authoring paginated reports that you can publish to the Power BI service, if you do not use paginated report, Report Builder is not neccessary.

 

For your requirement you do not need to use Report Server and Report Builder. DirectQuery is a connection mode, the other 2 modes are Import and Live Connection. Each connection mode is used to connect different datasources. Under Live connection mode, the report will automatically refresh when the datasource is updated. For DirectQuery and Import, if you want to make report refresh when the datasources updated, you need to manually refresh the dataset and report every time.

 

Hope that is clear, it is depended on what datasources you are connecting.


Paul Zheng _ Community Support Team
If this post helps, please Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

View solution in original post

1 REPLY 1
V-pazhen-msft
Community Support
Community Support

@RubySmith 

Two things you need to know:

Power BI Report Server do not have much relationship with PBI Service.

Power BI Report Builder is a tool for authoring paginated reports that you can publish to the Power BI service, if you do not use paginated report, Report Builder is not neccessary.

 

For your requirement you do not need to use Report Server and Report Builder. DirectQuery is a connection mode, the other 2 modes are Import and Live Connection. Each connection mode is used to connect different datasources. Under Live connection mode, the report will automatically refresh when the datasource is updated. For DirectQuery and Import, if you want to make report refresh when the datasources updated, you need to manually refresh the dataset and report every time.

 

Hope that is clear, it is depended on what datasources you are connecting.


Paul Zheng _ Community Support Team
If this post helps, please Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

Helpful resources

Announcements
April AMA free

Microsoft Fabric AMA Livestream

Join us Tuesday, April 09, 9:00 – 10:00 AM PST for a live, expert-led Q&A session on all things Microsoft Fabric!

March Fabric Community Update

Fabric Community Update - March 2024

Find out what's new and trending in the Fabric Community.