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.
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In the Ultra Transcenders books
Each book explains Power BI Desktop in context, with comparison tables and the common traps.
Terms in this definition
- WHERE
Limits a SELECT, UPDATE or DELETE to just the rows meeting a condition. Omit it, and the statement hits every row.
- CONNECT
In SQL Server, the right to open a connection to a database. Fabric's equivalent is Read permission on an item, which allows connecting to a warehouse or SQL endpoint but not querying anything in it.
- Power BI service
Power BI's browser-based SaaS component: people publish and share reports and semantic models there, create dashboards and apps, and set up scheduled data refreshes.
Related terms
- Auto date/time
With this Power BI Desktop option switched on, each date column in an Import table gets its own concealed date table, unless the column sits on a relationship's many side. That suits basic models, yet it inflates model size and prevents one shared date table from filtering several fact tables.
- Enhanced semantic model metadata
The metadata format that recent releases of Power BI Desktop use for semantic models they create or change. Models authored in Desktop need it before XMLA write operations can be performed on them.
- Enter data
A command on the Home ribbon of Power BI Desktop for building a table by typing or pasting values. Changes to that data must be made in Desktop and published again, as the service cannot edit it.
- Export to PDF
Saves a report as a PDF from Power BI Desktop or the service, giving one PDF page for each report page and keeping its sensitivity label. Reports with more than 50 pages cannot be exported, and admins can turn the feature off.
- Import mode
Copies data into the model's in-memory cache, so a refresh is needed before changes appear. It is Power BI's most used storage mode and what a new Power BI Desktop solution starts with.
- Live editing
When Power BI Desktop opens a Direct Lake semantic model this way, every change is written straight back to the copy in Fabric. Nothing is saved locally or published, Report view is unavailable, and each session starts a fresh version history point.
- Locale
Determines how Power Query reads dates and numbers stored as text when converting them. By default Power BI Desktop follows the regional format of the operating system; you can override this per file, or per step using Change type > Using locale.
- Make changes to this model
Use this on a live-connected report in Power BI Desktop to bolt on a local model. Doing so turns the connection into DirectQuery and the report becomes a composite model, letting you mix in extra data such as spreadsheet tables.