From One Big PBIX to a Shared Dataset + Thin Reports
" When is it time to stop copying PBIX files and start reusing a shared model?" Most BI developers begin their Power BI journey the same way: one PBIX file that does absolutely everything. It holds the data model, the queries, the measures, and all the report pages on top. It’s simple, self-contained, and easy to understand. That's normal, no? Yes, absolutely, but let's imagine a scenario where there are different teams, and they want the same dataset but tweaked in a different way for their purpose. Since your semantic model is quite big in terms of size. Generally, you can just make the adjustments and create multiple PBIX files for different audiences. This solution will work, but let's understand what we are doing. After a few months, what started as one neat, well-understood PBIX turns into a small family of very similar files: Multiple PBIX files containing almost the same model KPIs that should mean the same thing but don’t quite match A growing fear that c...