Introduction
Datamarts are a public preview feature in Power BI Premium (and Premium Per User) that enable self-service users to securely collect, store, analyze, and share their data in a unified, low code, solution – delivering SQL and unified analytics – all in a web-based experience, for the first time.
This blog serves as a round-up of all the features and new releases we’ve shipped since the start of 2023, including:
- Updates to the datamart editor
- Takeover ownership
- Connectivity to any SQL client
- Updates to your Ideas and What’s Coming
- Ideas we’ve shipped
- Ideas we’re working on
You can continue reading the rest of this blog post for more details about each of these items.
Updates to the datamart editor
We’ve simplified the datamart user experience by streamlining SQL and visual querying into one view:
- Data view – quickly preview, sort, and filter the data in your tables
- Query view – write SQL and visual queries to analyze your datamart
- Model view – model the default dataset, create measures, and create new reports
We are planning many additional features building from these improvements including enhancements to the ribbon, query view, and object explorer to promote developer productivity and consumption experiences. Stay tuned!
Takeover Ownership
Takeover ownership is now available in Power BI Datamart. In datamarts, the ‘owner’ or creator has special permissions to set up the data source credentials, the data sources, and the settings to populate the datamart with data. However, when organizational changes happen, sometimes these responsibilities need to be transferred to another member of the team.
To access this new feature, navigate to the settings of the datamart. The screenshot below will be front and center for you to takeover ownership of the datamart!
Connectivity to any SQL client
Power BI Datamart offers a SQL endpoint to connect to Microsoft client tools like Server Management Studio and Azure Data Studio to enhance your developer or consumption experiences. To make this super useful, you need a SQL endpoint that is accessible, open, and secure by default. We’re excited to announce today that we have enabled the SQL endpoint for any 3rd party client tools. This will enable secure AAD authentication and connections to notebooks, BI tools, client applications, and many more to take your Power BI Datamart capabilities to the next level.
To retrieve the SQL endpoint for your Datamart, navigate to the Datamart settings through the workspace > expand the server settings:
Your connection string will be waiting for you to be copied and used in any client tool of your choice using AAD authentication.
Updates to Your Ideas and What’s Coming
Thank you for all of your enthusiasm, feedback, and feature requests you’ve provided on Power BI Ideas, the Microsoft Power BI Community, and other forums, like Twitter. We really appreciate it! Below are some updates to your top ideas, where we’ll share dates and statuses along the way.
Ideas that have shipped
- Takeover ownership – enabling full control over data prep and datamart connectivity
- Enable datamarts for select users – improved access control
Ideas we’re working on
- Make the default dataset optional (under review)
- To highlight the capabilities of the default, auto-generated dataset, we’ve added an incremental update to show the banner below:
- We are evaluating options to make the default dataset more intuitive and give you more control over what is included in the dataset and its behavior. Come back in February for some exciting updates in this area!
- To highlight the capabilities of the default, auto-generated dataset, we’ve added an incremental update to show the banner below:
- Datamarts DML / DDL (under review)
- Save query as view (coming soon) – we’ve heard your feedback that views are super important for your analytical needs. We will soon be releasing the capability to save your query as a view. These views will be consumable via SQL and can be optionally added to the default dataset for reporting in Power BI. Stay tuned to our blog in February for more on this exciting update!
- We’re continuing to go through your feedback and explore additional ways to deliver additional SQL support and no-code experiences. We’d love to hear your perspective on what DML/DDL functionality is most important to you. Leave a comment below!
- Other Ideas – We updated multiple items on the ideas site and marked many of them under review. Once a top voted idea reaches an under review or planned state, it will be mentioned here for future updates.
That’s all for this month! Please continue sending us your feedback and do not forget to vote for other features that you would like to see in Power BI! We hope that you enjoy the update! As always, keep voting on Ideas to help us determine what to build next.