I am assisting a client who has about 20+ PowerBI reports.
The client has a certain standard that they would like to adhere to when it comes to the development of Power BI reports. As the Power BI report development is currently performed by data analysts, who do not have strong SQL skills, the client has decided that database developers will create user friendly SQL views to expose SQL tables to the report developers.
Below is a list of standards that needs to be adhered to but also verified during review of reports prior to publishing: Report Queries (datasets) must source its data from specific MS SQL views in the analytical database. Excessive and unnecessary additional steps must be avoided to ensure that the refresh process of these report queries is performance optimized.
Their request is to programmatically check the following on each PBIX file:
1 . what queries each report contains:
2 . what steps each query goes through
Essentially using some kind of program language (PowerShell, VB.Net, C#.Net etc) they want to read a PBIX file prior to publishing and determine the source data (Tables,Views) and Transformations (Applied Steps) so this can be analyzed for easier review as well as stored in a Wiki for dependency checks
Can a PBIX file be read in code form of XML, JSON etc to obtain this information?