size of my data source and

[ouafaa]

Hi, I want to understand please how my datasource is stored both in Power BI desktop and in Power BI service after publishing the report.

When I import my data source wich is an SQL Server database of 5GB using the import method and without doing any filters before the import, is the 5GB of data imported to power bi desktop? and when I publish the report in power bi service, does that put those 5Go on the cloud?

thank you 

Best regards,

Ouafaa

[Seth_C_Bauer]

@ouafaa If you were able to extract 5GB of data into the file, this would all be extracted initially (in memory), then as you apply that to the model layer it is highly compressed. So the files size is much smaller, and that will be the majority of the size of your PBIX file. To answer another way, if you have 5 GB of data, it is likely that your PBIX would be much smaller. (Side note, unless you have licensed Power BI Premium, you are limited to a 1 GB file size for the PBIX. (10GB PBIX for premium).

[ouafaa]

Hi,

If I understand your answer, that means that my data is loaded in memory not in the PIBX file. and when I view the report, data comes from my memory.  could you confirm that ?

and when I publish my report to power BI service ? what happens when i load a report from power BI Server? from where it gets data? 

thanks a lot

[Seth_C_Bauer]

@ouafaa Everytime you open your PBIX file a SSAS Tabular model is created on your machine. This runs in memory. The PBIX file contains the compressed version of your initial 5GB dataset. So when you are viewing your report that data stored in file is spooled up in memory in the Model and that is what you are interacting with.

When you publish, the same exact thing is happening except the SSAS model is in Azure in the sphere of the PBI Service.

[ouafaa]

Hi Thank you for the clarifications.

but does it make sense that the size of my PBIX file is 25MB?

Thanks a lot

Best regards,

Ouafaa