Standardized Datasets & Direct Query

[JasonShanks]

I have about ten months of experience with Power BI but have used other business intelligence platforms (MicroStrategy, Cognos, Tableau, etc.) for almost 20 years.  Most of my experience is in platforms that allow me to define a schema/framework that report developers and power users can use to create their reports within the "service" component of the platform.  The schema/framework approach allowed me to centralize and control the definitions and implementation of metrics and attributes.  I want to do something similar within Power BI; however, I'm having limited success.  I can use Power BI Desktop to create a "standard" model that includes measures; however, I've found that reports built against that published dataset run as Direct Query and some features are disabled.  My goal is to create a standard dataset for Finance, one for Marketing, one for Human Resources, etc. and move our Power BI users toward the Power BI service as power users.  Has anyone had success in implementing an approach like this in Power BI?

The benefits of the approach include:

- Standardized folder structure within the dataset

- Centralized definitions of metrics

- Minimized redundancy in having multiple datasets with the same structure

[JasonShanks]

This is great news!  Thank you for the link to the white paper.  I'll review it and see how I need to change my approach.  I appreciate your help!

[AlexisOlson · Accepted solution]

I have quite a bit of experience and success doing this. I have dozens of reports built off of just a couple of Standard Models. There are several ways to leverage a Standard Model:

1. Live-connect to the Standard Model.

2. DirectQuery the Standard Model and create a composite model.

3. DAX Query the Standard Model (example).

Each of these has benefits and drawbacks. I vaguely recall writing a comparison of the methods but I can't find it right now. Microsoft has a pretty extensive whitepaper on enterprise deployment that discusses centralized datasets (amongst many other topics):

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/guidance/whitepaper-powerbi-enterprise-deployment