Hi @JHob ,
No, they are not the same thing. A dataSOURCE is the place where you are getting the data from (like Excel, SQL, github, website,etc). A dataSET is the data that you have modified/combined/put together in query editor or modified with DAX.
Therefore, these are not the same thing and connecting to them is not treated the same way. You can (and it is sometimes recommended) that you use a PBI dataset to create other reports. It is a good thing to create PBI datasets that are shared and consumed by other developers. You can also have multiple reports in multiple different datasets using the same datasource.
As for an issue between connecting to a dataset vs a datasource my initial response is there should not be any significant difference. That said, there are many ways that it could cause performance issues if the original developer has a horriblly constructed dataset and that could make it slow. But, from a general statement of "which is better" for performance it should not really matter. Again, though, you are importing ONE dataSOURCE and when you connect to a dataSET you are linking to all the included datasources.
I would appreciate Kudos if my response was helpful. I would also appreciate it if you would Mark this As a Solution if it solved the problem. Thanks!
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