Power BI Data Modeling Offers More Enterprise Controls

• Power BI data modeling updates help data engineers simplify models and reduce maintenance efforts but require reliance on Azure features.
• Data model sharing receives more controls to help large enterprises and regulated businesses.
• SQL Server Analysis Services data models can be hosted in Power BI, improving performance and security for users of those models, but likely will result in higher Power BI cost.

Power BI is a set of Microsoft business intelligence (BI) technologies that include several tightly integrated software and Microsoft-hosted components. (An overview is available in the illustration “Power BI Components.”) This report describes updates and roadmap details for data modeling tools and hosting capabilities. All the features are available in Power BI Pro and Premium services, with a subset of the features available for Power BI Report Server on-premises and SharePoint Online.

Data Modeling Overview

In business intelligence, a data model compiles relevant, timely data that analysts can use to create BI applications like reports and dashboards for business decisions. For example, a data model used for product pricing calculations might pull data from procurement systems that have actual cost, inventory systems that show remaining product on-hand, sales systems that reflect gross and net sales by region, and, potentially, competitor pricing details that are harvested from online retail sites using machine learning routines. The model combines all this data into a single set of tables and columns to reduce the complexity of the data and includes additional calculations for profit margins, forecasts, and other approved metrics to help analysts create pricing strategies.