SSAS Tabular Live Connection Deprecation

[KevinW_SDP]

I have been working with Power BI and SQL Server Analysis Services for years at this point. Up until recently, you could set your SSAS cube with a live connection in the On-Premise Gateway, and then use the "Get Data" to connect directly to the cube without the use of Shared Data sets. 

I am trying to understand what the purpose of deprecating this feature is and forcing management of shared datasets now? This is adding extra work to the IT team when setting up new OLAP cubes for users to consume. 

I have been scouring the web to find a proper way of setting this up now, and have not found any useful information. Can someone point me in the right direction on how this should be addressed going forward?

[OneWithQuestion]

Does RLS work with shared datasources like that?

Where you connect to SSAS Tabular and publish the datasource to be shared?

[Greg_Deckler]

Sorry, can you provide your reference link for that announcement?

[KevinW_SDP]

@Greg_Deckler the crazy part is I didn't see any official notice on it. In the service itself it now shows up a message as shown below.

When you add a new live SSAS connection, and go to the SQL Server Analysis Services option in the image above, it will not show your new SSAS connection until you have published a report from Power BI Desktop that is connected to that data source. It then adds the data source into your data sets. At that point you can set it as a shared data set or certified data set like you can other data sets. 

[KevinW_SDP]

Also in the post https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Service/Connecting-to-Analysis-Services-from-the-Power-BI-Service/t... there is a Microsoft Employee that said that it is deprecated. Although none of the links they provide are of any value in giving guidance on going forward.

On Microsoft's site for connecting to Analysis Services, it hasn't been updated in July 2019. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/service-gateway-enterprise-manage-ssas

I started noticing this being an issue last month with one of my clients. There was another that pointed out the deprecation notice on the Get Data page. I am not sure when this went into effect though as I have not seen any announcement on this.

[Greg_Deckler]

@KevinW_SDP - You know, if you look at the guidance for the other options, they all refer to the Desktop and encourage its use. It strikes me as perhaps Microsoft is looking to slowly deprecate connections being initiated from the Service? In some respects, it makes sense, they have already gotten rid of content packs and options like that, they now have dataflows to be used instead. My bet is that whole Get Data interface is going to go away at some point or be replaced by the new way of doing things.

[KevinW_SDP · Accepted solution]

@Greg_Deckler 

Thank you for looking more into this. It is appreciated.

I have not had much experience messing with other sources in Power BI Service other than SSAS through the on-premise gateway as that tends to be my focus area. Can you provide any resources that would show the proper way of setting this up, or is it just a matter of the following?

1. Connect to SSAS cube in Power BI Desktop

2. Save report and upload to Workspace

3. Configure the new data set that is created from uploading the report to be shared with people in your organization

[Greg_Deckler]

Yep, that's about it!

[KevinW_SDP]

@Greg_Deckler Thank you for your help sir. 

[Greg_Deckler]

Hmm, interesting. It takes you here too: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/service-datasets-discover-across-workspaces

I'm looking into it.