Working of the dataset with structural changes via Deployment Pipeline

[rajulshah]

Hello everyone,

Please guide me on the below questions:

• When using deployment pipelines in Power BI, while deploying from one stage to another, does it empty the whole dataset and after the report gets deployed to another stage?
• When deploying from one stage to another, if there are any structural changes, does it refresh the whole dataset or just that table or keep the empty column(if a column is added) until the refresh is done?
  Please guide on this.

Any guidance would be helpful.

@marcorusso @Greg_Deckler @MFelix 

[v-yueyunzh-msft]

Hi , @rajulshah 

Here are my answers to your two advisory questions about the deployment pipeline feature of PBI:

Q1:When using deployment pipelines in Power BI, while deploying from one stage to another, does it empty the whole dataset and after the report gets deployed to another stage?

As far as I know, the process of deploying the pipeline will deploy the metadata and inter-table relationships of the dataset at this stage to the next stage, but the data will not be deployed in the past, and the loading of data requires you to reconfigure the credentials defined by the gateway connection and data source for the dataset in the current workspace, and trigger a data refresh to re-import the data.

Q2:When deploying from one stage to another, if there are any structural changes, does it refresh the whole dataset or just that table or keep the empty column(if a column is added) until the refresh is done?

As far as I know, if Power BI recognizes any structural changes at deployment time, it will recognize the two datasets as differences, and if it is a deploy between two items marked as difference, one-to-one full coverage.

Specifically, you can refer to this official document, and the operation between the two datasets marked as different is as follows:

Get started using deployment pipelines, the Power BI Application lifecycle management (ALM) tool - P...

Thank you for your time and sharing, and thank you for your support and understanding of PowerBI! 

Best Regards,

Aniya Zhang

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

[Greg_Deckler]

@rajulshah As discussed here: Deployment pipelines, the Power BI Application lifecycle management (ALM) tool, process - Power BI |.... When deploying to an empty stage, the data is not copied, just the metadata, etc. and so a refresh is required at the next stage to get the data. 

[rajulshah]

SO @Greg_Deckler , after deploying to another stage, does it empty the dataset?

[v-yueyunzh-msft · Accepted solution]

Hi , @rajulshah 

As far as I know, here is the answer of the official documentation to the question you mentioned:

Data in the target Power BI item, such as a dataset or dataflow, is kept when possible. If there are no changes to a Power BI item that holds the data, the data is kept as it was before the deployment.

In many cases, when you have a small change such as adding or removing a table, Power BI keeps the original data. For breaking schema changes, or changes in the data source connection, a full refresh is required.

For more information, you can refer to :
Deployment pipelines, the Power BI Application lifecycle management (ALM) tool, process - Power BI |...

Thank you for your time and sharing, and thank you for your support and understanding of PowerBI! 

Best Regards,

Aniya Zhang

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