Skip to main content
Microsoft Idea

Power BI

Completed

Allow more than one data source for Direct Queries.

Vote (641) Share
Botz's profile image

Botz on 08 Feb 2016 01:24:30

In order to make Direct query more useful it needs to support data from more than one source.

Administrator on 17 Nov 2018 02:49:10

Composite models, which lets you combine multiple direct query sources in one model along with import sources, is now generally available with our November release: https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/power-bi-desktop-november-2018-feature-summary/#compositeModels

Comments (51)
Botz's profile image Profile Picture

Mitch on 05 Jul 2020 22:47:04

RE: Allow more than one data source for Direct Queries.

I agree this would be great.

Botz's profile image Profile Picture

Sanjay on 05 Jul 2020 22:46:30

RE: Allow more than one data source for Direct Queries.

I have my dataset which contains import from SQL &
Google Analytics (Google online account). As I am using Enterprise Gateway I am unable to use this gateway into this Dataset.

I now have to separate my SQL and Google Analytics datasets and the question is how do I combine it into one report where I can filter by date as an example?

Botz's profile image Profile Picture

Tie on 05 Jul 2020 22:45:47

RE: Allow more than one data source for Direct Queries.

Import multiple data source first before can join is a deal breaker for broad adoption of the Power BI competing with tableau and other BI tools.

Botz's profile image Profile Picture

Cynthia on 05 Jul 2020 22:44:25

RE: Allow more than one data source for Direct Queries.

This is an essential feature that will enable the self-service reporting against multiple cloud based data sources. Please include it in your next Power BI release.

Botz's profile image Profile Picture

Justin on 05 Jul 2020 22:43:28

RE: Allow more than one data source for Direct Queries.

This is an essential feature and needs to be implemented ASAP!!!!

Botz's profile image Profile Picture

Adel Khelif on 05 Jul 2020 22:39:07

RE: Allow more than one data source for Direct Queries.

We are getting by, by creating cross database views, but it is not ideal. Please consider this feature as it would tremendously help companies with legacy databases.

Botz's profile image Profile Picture

Ian Bennett on 05 Jul 2020 22:33:36

RE: Allow more than one data source for Direct Queries.

A common requirement is to have a fairly small list of say customer ids from a campaign management system (lets say around 1000) and then need to match that list against transactions (we could be talking billions) to get total spend for those customers. The necessary integrations have not yet been made in the data warehouse and we just want to prototype the concept.

Essentially what we need is for the 1000 customer ids to be pushed down to a direct query so that the join is performed in the data warehouse (dirty read only solution: use a very large IN clause; cleaner read/write solution: create a temp table for the customer ids and join).

QlikSense can do this.

Botz's profile image Profile Picture

David Frearson on 05 Jul 2020 22:23:59

RE: Allow more than one data source for Direct Queries.

I have a service supported by a distributed system each with its own SQL server I need to consolidate data from all these SQL instances to correctly reflect the service metrics. So this would be invaluable to me as well.

Botz's profile image Profile Picture

ZLJ on 05 Jul 2020 22:22:34

RE: Allow more than one data source for Direct Queries.

We don't (yet) have a data warehouse, so many of my reports are running off multiple data sources. The ability to have direct query from multiple sources would be invaluable.

Botz's profile image Profile Picture

Ian Bennett on 05 Jul 2020 22:20:21

RE: Allow more than one data source for Direct Queries.

A common requirement is to filter large transactional data sets against a small list of customers. Forcing an import to make that join can be prohibitive. QlikSense allows such connections to be made with the large data source still accessed directly for potentially near instant results.