Bjorn Braet on 07 Jul 2022 17:48:02
I tried out Datamarts (preview feature) today and have to say I am amazed by the ease of use, flexibility and quickness in creating and handling millions of rows into a fully usable dataset just in the Service !
This would be the ultimate replacement for shared datasets except... for one item which is used very frequently in more advanced models => Calculation Groups !
Let's say you have created your ultimate Datamart with measures and relationships, ready to share with power users or colleagues within your organization ! You don't need any in between datasets anymore, no dataflows. Only your functioning Datamart and one source of truth to which your Front-End reports are connected ! Add RLS to that and you are good to go to create Front-End reports.
Except... when you use Calculation Groups developing your model in Desktop.
Because of this, you would have to import your Datamart data into a second PowerBI Desktop dataset which would then be ready to be deployed for your reports that require calculation groups.
Not sure if calculation groups would ever become a standard thing in PowerBi, but this is the only reason we would not be able to fully roll out Data Marts with ease right now !