What is Live Connection in Power BI?

< 1 min read

Live Connection means Power BI connects directly to an existing dataset or Analysis Services model.
Power BI does not store data or create its own data model.
In my project, we connected Power BI Desktop to a centralized SSAS Tabular model maintained by the BI team.
All measures, relationships, and calculations were already predefined there.
We only created visuals and reports on top of that semantic model.
Any change in the central model automatically reflected in all reports.
Security like row-level security was controlled at the source model.
We could not edit tables or create new calculated columns locally.
This ensured one version of truth across multiple departments.
Mostly used in enterprise environments with governed datasets.

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