Chris Webb's BI Blog

The ever-vigilant folks on the internet have spotted that there’s a new M function in the latest versions of Power BI and Excel: Module.Versions. This function, at the time of writing, returns ...

https://blog.crossjoin.co.uk/2024/05/26/module-versions-function-in-power-query/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=module-versions-function-in-power-query

A few months ago I blogged about the new limits available for the Maximum Connections Per Data Source property in Premium and why the number of connections that a DirectQuery semantic model can o...

https://blog.crossjoin.co.uk/2024/05/19/diagnosing-power-bi-directquery-connection-limit-performance-problems-with-execution-metrics/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=diagnosing-power-bi-directquery-connection-limit-performance-problems-with-execution-metrics

Since the announcement in March that Power BI Premium P-SKUs are being retired and that customers will need to migrate to F-SKU capacities intead I have been asked the same question several times...

https://blog.crossjoin.co.uk/2024/05/15/migrating-from-power-bi-p-sku-premium-capacities-to-f-sku-capacities-is-not-the-same-thing-as-enabling-fabric/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=migrating-from-power-bi-p-sku-premium-capacities-to-f-sku-capacities-is-not-the-same-thing-as-enabling-fabric

I have always wondered what the partialBatch option for the commitMode parameter in the Enhanced Refresh API does exactly. There is some documentation here and here but I was curious to find out ...

https://blog.crossjoin.co.uk/2024/05/12/the-partialbatch-commit-mode-in-the-power-bi-enhanced-refresh-api/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-partialbatch-commit-mode-in-the-power-bi-enhanced-refresh-api

In the Power BI Service, Import mode models are stored offline and paged into memory only when they are needed – for example because someone runs a report that uses the model as its source. As ...

https://blog.crossjoin.co.uk/2024/05/05/power-bi-semantic-model-memory-errors-part-2-max-offline-semantic-model-size/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=power-bi-semantic-model-memory-errors-part-2-max-offline-semantic-model-size

You probably know that semantic models in Power BI can use a fixed amount of memory. This is true of all types of semantic model – Import, Direct Lake and DirectQuery – but it’s not somethi...

https://blog.crossjoin.co.uk/2024/04/28/power-bi-semantic-model-memory-errors-part-1-model-size/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=power-bi-semantic-model-memory-errors-part-1-model-size

It’s time for another short post on the free books that various authors have been kind enough to send me over the last few months. Full disclosure: these aren’t reviews as such, they’re mor...

https://blog.crossjoin.co.uk/2024/04/21/power-bi-data-books-roundup/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=power-bi-data-books-roundup

There are a couple of nice new features to do with table joins (or merges as they are known in M) and query folding in Power Query in the April release of Power BI Desktop that I want to highligh...

https://blog.crossjoin.co.uk/2024/04/14/new-semi-join-anti-join-and-query-folding-functionality-in-power-query/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=new-semi-join-anti-join-and-query-folding-functionality-in-power-query

The built-in mapping functionality in Power BI paginated reports is fairly basic. However the integration of Power Query into Power BI paginated reports gives you an interesting new way of creati...

https://blog.crossjoin.co.uk/2024/04/07/displaying-azure-maps-in-a-power-bi-paginated-report/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=displaying-azure-maps-in-a-power-bi-paginated-report

By far the most exciting announcement for me this week was the new release of Power BI Report Builder that has Power Query built in, allowing you to connect to far more data sources in paginated ...

https://blog.crossjoin.co.uk/2024/03/31/power-bi-paginated-reports-that-connect-to-web-services-and-excel/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=power-bi-paginated-reports-that-connect-to-web-services-and-excel