Updated: February 6, 2024 (July 9, 2023)

Fabric Dataflow Is Not Power BI Dataflow

Andrew analyzes and writes about Microsoft's data management, business intelligence, and machine learning solutions, as well as aspects of licensing... more

Fabric Dataflow Gen 2 (based on Power BI Dataflow Gen 1) includes beneficial upgrades and new features.
Differences in data storage, architecture, deployment, and other limitations can complicate migration and increase cost.
Dataflow Gen 2 is only available in Fabric deployments, requiring an upgrade for existing Power BI customers.

Fabric Dataflow Gen 2 is a data transformation feature in Microsoft Fabric, a new end-to-end data analytics cloud service (in preview) that simplifies the deployment and use of several Microsoft data, analytics, and business intelligence (BI) services. Fabric Dataflow Gen 2 offers extract, transform, and load (ETL) based on Power BI’s similar Dataflow Gen 1 ETL component and adds new processing and data storage options that solve some key limitations of Gen 1. Dataflow Gen 2’s packaging also makes it available to smaller organizations that could not afford a Power BI Premium deployment. Power BI customers who want to use Gen 2 will need to deploy Microsoft Fabric or upgrade from Power BI.

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