We are excited to announce the general availability of read/write XMLA endpoint in Power BI Premium. With XMLA endpoints, Power BI inherits a large ecosystem of developers, partners, BI tools, and solutions built over the years. XMLA endpoints provide access to the Analysis Services engine in the Power BI service, allowing customers to leverage enterprise BI tools directly on Power BI datasets. The read-only capability provided open-platform connectivity for Power BI datasets; enabling single-version-of-the-truth semantic models that are compatible with a range of data-visualization tools from different vendors. Read/write XMLA endpoints introduced many additional enterprise BI scenarios for dataset management, application lifecycle management, governance, complex semantic modeling, debugging, and monitoringโ all within Power BI!
As part of the GA release, weโre also introducing the following new capabilities:
- Role membership. Dataset metadata through the XMLA endpoint can now be scripted to create, modify, or delete model roles for a dataset, set row-level security (RLS) filters, and set memberships for Azure Active Directory (AAD) users. Learn more here.
- Live connection. XMLA endpoint can be used to connect live to datasets. When migrating existing models from Azure Analysis Services to Power BI Premium, customers can live connect to the Power BI workspace and publish to the Power BI service. Learn more here.
- Service principal support. Users can now connect with service principals through the XMLA endpoint to automate unattended resource and service level operations such as provisioning workspaces, deploying models, and dataset refreshes. Learn more here.
To enable the read/write XMLA endpoint for your Power BI Premium capacity, please go to the dataset settings capacity admin page.
XMLA endpoints is a significant step towards truly unifying enterprise grade analytics and self-service BI on a single platform. With Power BI Premium, even the most demanding enterprise needs can now be met with tools and processes that Power BI has inherited from Analysis Services. ย Here are just some of the client tools that work out of the box with Power BI Premium XMLA endpoints.
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Visual Studio with Analysis Services projects โ Also known SQL Server Data Tools, or simply SSDT, is a model authoring tool for Analysis Services tabular models. Analysis Services projects extensions are supported on all Visual Studio 2017 and later editions, including the free Community edition. To learn more, seeย Tools for Analysis Services.
SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) โ Supports DAX, MDX, and XMLA queries. Perform fine-grain refresh operations and scripting of dataset metadata using the Tabular Model Scripting Language (TMSL). Requires version 18.8 or above. Download here.
SQL Server Profilerย โ Installed with SSMS, this tool provides tracing and debugging of dataset events. While officially deprecated for SQL Server, Profiler continues to be included in SSMS and remains supported for Analysis Services and now, Power BI Premium. To learn more, seeย SQL Server Profiler.
Analysis Services Deployment Wizardย โ Installed with SSMS, this tool allows deployment of an SSDT tabular model project to a Power BI Premium workspace. It can be run interactively, or from the command line for automation. For example, this tool can be invoked fromย Azure DevOps pipelines. To learn more, seeย Running the Analysis Services Deployment Wizard.
PowerShell cmdletsย โ Use the Analysis Services cmdlets to automate dataset management tasks like refresh operations. To learn more, seeย Analysis Services PowerShell Reference.
Power BI Report Builderย โ A tool for authoring paginated reports. Create a report definition that specifies what data to retrieve, where to get it, and how to display it. You can preview your report in Report Builder, and then publish your report to the Power BI service. To learn more, seeย Power BI Report Builder.
Tabular Editorย โ Enables BI professionals to easily build, maintain and manage tabular models using an intuitive, lightweight editor. A hierarchical view shows all objects in your tabular model. They are organized by display folders, with support for multi-select property editing and DAX syntax highlighting. To learn more, seeย tabulareditor.github.io.
DAX Studioย โ A complete tool for DAX authoring, diagnosis, performance tuning and analysis. Features include object browsing, integrated tracing, query execution breakdowns with detailed statistics, DAX syntax highlighting and formatting. To learn more, seeย daxstudio.org.
ALM Toolkitย โ A schema compare tool for Power BI datasets used for application lifecycle management (ALM) scenarios. Perform easy deployment across environments and retain incremental refresh of ย historical data. Diff and merge metadata files, branches and repos. Reuse common definitions between datasets. To learn more, seeย alm-toolkit.com.
Excel PivotTablesย โ Use Excel PivotTables to summarize, analyze, explore, and present summary data from Power BI datasets. Click-to-Run version of Office 16.0.11326.10000 or above is required.
Third partyย โ Includes client data visualization applications and tools that can connect to, query, and consume datasets in Power BI Premium. Most tools require the latest versions of MSOLAP client libraries, but some may use ADOMD.
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To learn more about these and other features in XMLA endpoints, see Dataset connectivity with the XMLA endpoint.