There’s so much going on in the Fabric community that it can be hard to keep up with it all. Semantic Link Labs is a great example: in the six months or so since I last had a proper look at it my ...

If you have a DirectQuery fact table in Power BI you can use user-defined aggregations to improve query performance; querying a smaller, summarised copy of your data in an Import mode aggregation ...

Refreshing an Import mode semantic model can be slow and can consume a lot of CUs on your capacity. Refreshing a Direct Lake semantic model (also known as framing) is almost instant and consumes ...

A few months ago I wrote about a rare error – the “Maximum allowable memory allocation” error – that may occur when the physical machine, or node, that a ...

The addition of Direct Lake as a third storage mode in Fabric didn’t change the situation. While there are some really good reasons to use Direct Lake instead of Import mode (which I should really ...

If you have a lot of Power BI semantic models that are scheduled to refresh at the same time in the Service then you may find that some of them fail with the following error: You’ve exceeded the ...

Did you know that you can configure your Power BI semantic model so that it automatically binds to a data source connection when you publish? To illustrate how to do this, I created an Import mode ...

I’ve been working with Microsoft BI tools for 28 years now and for all that time Microsoft has been consistent in its belief that semantic models are a good thing. Fashions have changed and at ...

Back in September 2024 I wrote a blog post on how to create multiple copies of the same dimension in a Direct Lake semantic model without creating copies of the underlying Delta table. Not long after ...

If there is sensitive data in your Power BI semantic model that you don’t want some users to see then you need to use row-level security or object-level security to control access to that data. You’re ...

If there are specific ways you want your data to be visualised by Power BI Copilot then you have two options. You can use Verified Answers to link questions to visuals on your reports and can even set ...

If you’re the admin for a large Power BI/Fabric tenant you’ll know how important it is to monitor your on-premises data gateways: if they aren’t working then no-one will be able to refresh any ...