Dataflow from a database in Power Bi Service

[Anonymous]

Hello! 

Is it possible to grab measures/tables from a Database (in Power BI Service) and create a Dataflow? 

The purpose of this is to be able to use this same measures/tables in other databases to build reports. 

Thank you, 

[Icey]

Hi @Anonymous ,

The "database" you mentioned means "dataset", right?

If it is, based on my test, it is not supported yet currently. You can come up a new idea about that and add your comments there to improve Power BI and make this feature coming sooner.

If not, it just means "database", you can connect to databases that appear on the page when creating a dataflow.

But, to my knowledge, there are no measures in databases, except SSAS. But Power BI Dataflow can't connect to SSAS currently.

Best Regards,

Icey

If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

[Anonymous]

Yes, I meant Dataset.

Thank you, Icey.

[collinq]

Hi ddesa,

Technically, I believe that you could do this.  One of the purposes for a dataflow is to connect to data from multiple sources and to clean and transform the data and then the dataset is built out of the dataflow process.

Therefore, my answer would be that the more common method for being able to re-use measures and columns is to create a dataset within Power BI that you use in other reports.  This makes life a bit more efficient when you know that you are going to be using the same measures/columns in multiple places (and perhaps by multiple people) because you have a central location for all the measures in one dataset.

[Anonymous]

Thank you.

The problem with this is that you can connect two different datasets, and my goal is to find a way to re-use measures across different datasets.

[collinq]

Well, a measure will be tied to a field in a table.  If you have a measure it can't be used in a DIFFERENT dataset because I am assuming that the table and field name will be different.  So, I am thinking you could make the measure(s) for each dataset and save them that way.  You would have to do the manual copy/paste to use the exact same measure in a different dataset.

I am wondering if you could make a template with measures in it and then the instructions for everybody to use them would be to grab that template and then to immediately connect it to the correct dataset.

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!