Understanding data connectivity and storage modes
Choosing a data connectivity and storage mode is usually the first major decision that must be made when setting up a brand-new solution in Power BI. Today, this decision is based on what is available in Power BI or Fabric, plus the underlying data sources. This means choosing between Import, DirectQuery, and Direct Lake, which we introduced in the previous chapter. Within Power BI Desktop or the Power BI service, you need to make this decision as soon as you connect to a data source and before you can see a preview of the data to begin modeling.
A few notes here:
- DirectQuery mode does not support all data sources. Most only offer Import mode. Be aware of this for data freshness and when combining different data sources.
- Direct Lake supports the Delta Table format in Fabric. An extract, transform, and load method would need to be implemented in Fabric or another Lakehouse tool to have the Delta Table support needed for...
