Question

How can I troubleshoot and resolve Direct Query failures during publishing?

"Direct Query mode errors during publishing are causing disruptions to our report deployment. What are the best practices and troubleshooting steps to identify and resolve these failures? Are there specific tools or logs that can aid in diagnosing the problem?"

Answer 1

Troubleshooting Direct Query Failure in Power BI

Direct Query mode errors usually arise during the publish for one of these reasons: connectivity issues, data source limitations, or query performance constraints. Start by verifying that you can access the data source and that the credentials used for the connection are correct. Also, do a thorough check on gateway configuration since misconfigured gateways can block Direct Query connections.

You can use Power BI Desktop Performance Analyzer to see the query's execution and find bottlenecks, errors, etc. In the Power BI Service, the Activity Log could also give some insight into certain issues since it will provide error details as to why a problem occurred. As with Direct Query and unsupported features, some DAX functions or transformations have compatibility restrictions.

Best source practices would include:

• Optimizing the source query for performance.
• Narrowing the amount of data.
• Ensuringprocessed in real time that server resources are sufficient for the query load.

Schedule regular updates to gateways and drivers to avoid compatibility problems and cache the databases, which are most likely cached first when Direct Query is restricted.