PowerBI + Snowflake: ODBC Connection: DirectQuery - powerbi

we are evaluating both products, Snowflake as a data warehouse and PowerBI as the visualisation platform for dashboarding / reporting needs.
We have a requirement to use the Snowflake with the AWS PrivateLinks, which make the out of the box tools that come with PowerBI Desktop (and Service) as useless when user wants to use the SSO.
So currently I've setup the ODBC connection using the Snowflake's ODBC driver and Windows ODBC Settings. When I use the Get Data -> ODBC -> MyNewConnection I can't see the option of DirectQuery.
I'd like to ask for help if you know how can I setup the DirectQuery type of connection with the ODBC Connector to Snowflake ?

Correct, if you are using PowerBI SSO option in the PowerBI service based on this, Privatelink is not supported .
If you have PowerBI Gateway, then the Privatelink should work.
Use of the Gateway would not allow authenticator=externalbrowser and the only option is Username and Password to login. The authenticator=externalbrowser is only allowed for PowerBI Desktop when used with ODBC generic driver but then you will lose Direct Query option as you noticed.
If these options are limiting, feel free to open a feature request with Microsoft to support Privatelink through PowerBI SSO.

ODBC connections don't support DirectQuery. There a probably a couple of options:
Build your own. Use the Data Connector SDK to build your own extension that enables DirectQuery
Use the Progress ODBC DataDirect ODBC driver. Details can be found here
However, before you go down either of these routes (and assuming you haven't already done this) I would talk to your Snowflake account manager to see if there is any way of getting PowerBI Snowflake native connections to work with your setup

Related

How to connect to SAP BO universe via Power BI?

Our enterprise management database is housed in Business Objects Universes. I'm looking for our Power BI analysts to create Power BI reports by connecting to universes.
This link says such a connector was available: https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-ca/blog/power-bi-connectivity-to-sap-businessobjects-bi-now-generally-available/
It also says it is no longer available:
Update May 2016: SAP BO connectivity is no longer available. Microsoft
Power BI has new SAP BW and SAP HANA connectors. Learn more about
these connectors.
Does this mean that I can use the SAP BW and/or SAP HANA connectors to connect to the SAP BO universe? or is connectivity to universe not possible anymore?
The following link from Power BI Ideas says that the connector was removed altogether: https://ideas.powerbi.com/ideas/idea/?ideaid=8903cb67-e1df-4014-8b36-eaae3c4ba00c
Administrator on 12/7/2020 10:45:41 PM Unfortunately, the Business
Objects connector was removed due to a number of reasons.
Following are similar ideas but there is no response:
https://ideas.powerbi.com/ideas/idea/?ideaid=d6b2decd-89e0-480a-ab62-c08a809db281
https://ideas.powerbi.com/ideas/idea/?ideaid=fd98c963-549d-eb11-89ee-281878bda47d
https://ideas.powerbi.com/ideas/idea/?ideaid=4cc55370-2291-4b90-9606-957f5727108f
How to connect to SAP BO universe via Power BI?
How to connect to SAP BO universe via Power BI?
Either through a custom connector, an ODBC connector, or if BO supports standard web protocols. Looks like CData has an ODBC driver.
But the recommended approach create new "semantic layer" using Power BI Datasets that load the same data and bypass BO.

Power BI security

I am new BI and working on power bi reports embedded into user application. How can I explain users about how data is secured in power bi. I am getting many questions about security. Can you kindly explain how you explained to your customers?
Thanks alot
Well,
Once you embed(Publish) a report to website, all the people who can access that website link can access the report and data.
So its a way to share Power BI report for free.
As you are using reports embeded in another application, if that application has integration with Azure then we can use Azure AD with that. Moreover, You can implement RLS, OLS and data masking in pbi, even in embeded mode.
Internally, datasets hosted in the PBI service are using Azure SQL in an encrypted mode. Even the credentials used to get data are encrypted.
If you want to explain customers, use the whitepaper of security.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/guidance/whitepaper-powerbi-security

Power BI Embedded

We embedded a report into web application and now a user want to build his
own dashboard from the report but pin a tile to dashboard option is
not available can we embed pin to dashboard option? Can we handle it
in API?
As we have email subscription (scheduled) for reports in power bi
service, how will we handle the same in our embedded application
side, if the user want to see the updated reports on daily basis which
should be scheduled automatically?
Power BI Embedded (PBIE) is PaaS, so you have to write you own code to handle some cases using official and legal SDK. PBIE doesn't work the same way as Power BI Services (PBIS).
As for you questions:
You can't do the same thing with pinning visuals into dashboard. It supported only inside PBIS.
You can't do this neither.
PBIE is more like engine, some core things that draw specific report into you app. There are no any features like report sharing or subscription. This is by design. Those features were implemented as part of PBIS and doesn't fit PBIE. You should implement something similar on your app level.
Play with PBIE and explore SDK playground.

Can you publish PowerBI Reports to SSRS 2014?

We need to be able to publish PowerBI reports locally (versus publishing to the PowerBI service/website). We're running SQL Server 2014, because we do not feel SQL Server 2016 is mature enough to use yet (maybe in a year or two).
What options do we have for publishing PowerBI reports to some local resource (e.g. SSRS, a static web page, etc.)? Can we publish to SSRS 2014 (in SQL Server 2014)?
You can publish to an on-premises Pyramid Analytic server.
Microsoft collaborated with Pyramid Analytics to develop the Power BI
Desktop. Pyramid Analytics’ on-premise server-based technology
complements Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services, leveraging all the
features of the Microsoft BI stack. You can now publish a Power BI
Desktop file to Pyramid Analytics Server, and more features will be
added over the next few months to enable seamless integration. We’re
excited to collaborate in accelerating the delivery of innovative BI
features that customers want and need most.
Source.
Currently, only technical preview of SSRS 2016 vNext supports PowerBI integration. SSRS Blog
One option to run it locally today is to manually distribute PBIX files, and view them in PowerBI desktop.
Or you can run that technical preview, of course. You could set up a separate instance solely for PowerBI reports, and carry on using 2014 for everything else.

Does Microsoft POWER BI work in-house without relying on cloud technology? How is it done?

Does Microsoft POWER BI work in-house without relying on cloud technology? How is it done?
Here is one way: Download Power BI Desktop. Create .pbix documents. Share as you would an Excel workbook.
Use on-premises or external data sources that you have access to. For example, access a SQL Server database using Windows integrated security if so configured; or use the "page scraping" feature to pull a table off of a web page. The data is stored in the .pbix and can be manually refreshed.
This is obviously not a very sophisticated or well-managed approach but does have some advantages.
Following on from #Tom's answer, here's the roadmap including on-prem PowerBI that MS published last year.
https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/dataplatforminsider/2015/10/29/microsoft-business-intelligence-our-reporting-roadmap/
The short version is that there appears to be an intention of adding this to SSRS in a future release. But for now, the option we use is to share PowerBI workbooks using PowerBI desktop as #Tom describes.