A project format for Power BI Desktop in which the report and model are saved as plain-text definitions in folders, not as a single binary file, making Git and CI/CD practical. Switching to or from .pbix happens only via Save as.
Also called Power BI Project.
Read more: Microsoft Learn
In the Ultra Transcenders books
Each book explains PBIP in context, with comparison tables and the common traps.
Terms in this definition
- Foundry project
A container beneath a Foundry resource that keeps one team's agents, data, files, evaluations and project connections separate. Model deployments and resource-level connections are shared from the parent, and governance is not configured at this level.
- FORMAT
A DAX function that turns a value into text according to a format string, for instance "MMMM" to show a month's name. Since the output is text, numeric operations can't use it, and dynamic format strings were introduced to get around that.
- Power BI Desktop
A free Windows program where authors connect to sources, shape and model data, and design reports before publishing them to the Power BI service. Dashboards are not made here.
- Git
A distributed version control system. Anything kept in Git, prompts included, gains a history of authors, timestamps, diffs and tags, and changes can be reverted.
- CI/CD
Pipelines, for example in Azure Pipelines or GitHub Actions, that build, test and deploy code automatically; short for continuous integration and continuous delivery.
- PBIX
The binary file Power BI Desktop uses by default. Its contents are opaque to anything but Desktop, which is why teams wanting source control or Git integration choose PBIP instead.
Related terms
- TMDL
A YAML-like text format that stores a tabular semantic model as a folder of .tmdl files, for example one per table or role. It maps fully to TOM, works well with source control, and is what a Power BI Project uses by default.