Power BI - Control and flexibility - Source control in action - WK9 Extra
This is really more of a necessity than a want. I mean it that I'm sure people will not like me making this video but I felt I had to make it so you have been warned! - RW
Power BI is the latest iteration of over two decades (probably nearly three by now) of Analytics within the SQL server family (don't ever forget that). The point is that SQL and the Analysis and Reporting services that came with it are all able to be source controlled relatively easily, especially with the tool of today i.e. DevOps. The problem is the Power BI Desktop led the path that the majority of Power BI implementations will use just doesn't support that, as the sheer size of the items involved and their compiled nature of them makes splitting development nearly impossible.
For the last three to four years, we have championed the use of Thin Reports to get the most out of Power BI. Thin reports do not need to be controlled at any level. They are in our minds, "disposable" they are, after all only collection of visualisations. We protect the files by ensuring they're backed up in multiple locations, but ultimately we use the service as the preferred source of truth. With Thin reports, you then have the models. These are typically larger files starting in the 50MB range and exceeding 1GB. DevOps typically struggles with files that size and the inability to fork the code makes traditional solutions incompatible.
The result is a solution that you need to manage and control. But not one that a ready-made toolkit exists to support.
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