Blog |Delice Consulting Cabinet de conseil IT et Data
18 Oct

Monitoring The Impact Of Full-Text Indexing On Semantic Model Refresh In Power BI

The September release of Power BI saw the introduction of a powerful new feature: full text indexing, which makes searching and filtering on text columns much faster and enables the use of the new TextContains() and TextSimilarity() DAX functions. You need to enable it on a per-column basis and when you do that you have … Continue reading Monitoring The Impact Of Full-Text Indexing On Semantic Model Refresh In Power BI →

By Chris Webb DAX, Power BI , comments Read More
11 Oct

ApproximateDistinctCount In Power BI Is Sometimes Slower Than DistinctCount

As a follow-on from last week’s post about the new ApproximateDistinctCount function in DAX, I want to share something I found out from my recent testing for this function: ApproximateDistinctCount is sometimes slower than DistinctCount. This sounds counter-intuitive, right? After all ApproximateDistinctCount is a performance optimisation for the sometimes slow, expensive DistinctCount function. But it … Continue reading ApproximateDistinctCount In Power BI Is Sometimes Slower Than DistinctCount →

By Chris Webb DAX, Performance Tuning , Power BI comments Read More
04 Oct

The Problem With Approximate Distinct Counts In Power BI – And How To Solve It

As you’ve probably seen in the blog post for the September 2026 release of Power BI, Import mode and Direct Lake mode semantic models now support the ApproximateDistinctCount() DAX function. I tested its performance on a Direct Lake semantic model with a 1.4 billion row fact table based on the NYC Taxi sample data and … Continue reading The Problem With Approximate Distinct Counts In Power BI – And How To Solve It →

By Chris Webb DAX, Performance Tuning , Power BI comments Read More
27 Sep

Improvements To Power Query Integration In Power BI Report Builder

There are some nice improvements to Power Query integration in the latest version of Power BI Report Builder that, while they are documented, didn’t get an official blog post but which I think deserve to be highlighted. First of all the “Get Data” button has been renamed “Power Query”: Secondly, and most importantly, there’s a … Continue reading Improvements To Power Query Integration In Power BI Report Builder →

By Chris Webb Power BI Report Builder, Power Query , comments Read More
20 Sep

Find Unused Objects In Power BI Semantic Models With Semantic Link Labs

A few weeks ago I wrote about how Semantic Link Labs now has tools with interactive UIs and showed how you could use this to view lineage and so Vertipaq-Analyzer-stuff in a notebook. I didn’t show what I think is the coolest new feature though: the ability to find the tables, columns and measures in … Continue reading Find Unused Objects In Power BI Semantic Models With Semantic Link Labs →

By Chris Webb Power BI, Semantic Link Labs , Workspace Monitoring comments Read More
13 Sep

Find What Changed And When In Your Power BI Semantic Model

Here’s a situation I’ve found myself in many times. You’re called to help someone whose Power BI report is suddenly very slow. You ask whether any changes were made to the semantic model around the time performance got worse and the answer is no, absolutely not. You then spend anything from a few hours to … Continue reading Find What Changed And When In Your Power BI Semantic Model →

By Chris Webb DAX, DAX Studio , Performance Tuning comments Read More
06 Sep

Choosing A Power BI Storage Mode For Reporting On Data From Azure Databricks

In case you haven’t already seen the blog post on the Power BI blog or the discussion on LinkedIn, we at Microsoft published a new white paper last week to help you decide which storage mode to use when you’re using Power BI to create semantic models and reports on data stored in Azure Databricks. … Continue reading Choosing A Power BI Storage Mode For Reporting On Data From Azure Databricks →

By Chris Webb Composite Models, Databricks , Direct Lake comments Read More
30 Aug

Referencing Images And Other Files In Power BI Reports Using OneLake URLs

Several years ago I wrote a very popular blog post about how to store images for your reports inside your Power BI semantic model. It solved the problem of how you could use display images (for example of products) inside your reports without making those images available via a public URL or personal OneDrive Embed … Continue reading Referencing Images And Other Files In Power BI Reports Using OneLake URLs →

By Chris Webb OneLake, Power BI , comments Read More
23 Aug

Tools With Interactive UIs In Fabric Notebooks With Semantic Link Labs

There’s so much going on in the Fabric community that it can be hard to keep up with it all. Semantic Link Labs is a great example: in the six months or so since I last had a proper look at it my colleague Michael Kovalsky has done a whole load of cool things and … Continue reading Tools With Interactive UIs In Fabric Notebooks With Semantic Link Labs →

By Chris Webb Fabric, Power BI , Semantic Link Labs comments Read More
16 Aug

Displaying The Output Of Detail Rows Expressions In Power BI Reports Using The Paginated Report Visual

In last week’s post I mentioned that while Power BI reports (unlike Excel PivotTables) do not support the Detail Rows Expression feature, it is possible to partially work around this limitation by using the paginated report visual. In this post I’ll show you how I was able to do this and what is and isn’t … Continue reading Displaying The Output Of Detail Rows Expressions In Power BI Reports Using The Paginated Report Visual →

By Chris Webb DAX, Paginated reports , Power BI comments Read More