MySQL and Power BI, How Does It Work?

MySQL and Power BI

Update 1: At the time of writing this blog post (Aug 2015) Power BI Service called Power BI Web. I hope it doesn’t make any confusions.

Update 2: MySQL data source is available in “On-premises Data Gateway – Enterprise Mode” as well. So if you are setting this up for an organisation, then “Personal Mode” (AKA Power BI Personal Gateway) would not be suitable. When I wrote this blog post only “Power BI Personal Gateway” was available.

In this post I explain how to use MySQL and Power BI. This post covers the following areas:

  • Get data from MySQL
  • Schedule refresh on-premises MySQL from power BI web app

First of all I’d like to mention that in this post I use AdventureWorksDW which is imported into MySQL. If you want to do so you can use “Migration Wizard” from “Database” menu on MySQL Workbench.

MySQL and Power BI

I’m not going to explain the migration process as it’s out of scope.

How MySQL and Power BI work together

MySQL is one of the world’s most popular relational database management systems (RDBMS) widely used by the industry. It’s open source, works with many different system platforms including Microsoft Windows and Linux. So it is worth to have a look at it and see how it works with Power BI.

Luckily Microsoft provided the built-in connector in Power BI Desktop. This is how it works all together:

MySQL and Power BI

I’d like to say that it’s not necessary to create reports in Power BI Desktop. You can get data from a MySQL database then publish it to the Power BI cloud then setup a schedule data refresh in the Power BI web app. Then you can create your reports and dashboards on the cloud and share them with your colleagues very easily.

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