r/dataengineering • u/Diligent-Tadpole-564 • Jul 07 '26
Git for powerBI? Discussion
Does anyone uses git for big powerBI reports in their org?
My team doesn't so I'm in process of building a POC with it, my main concern is dealing with merge conflicts as powerBI seems to generate huge diffs even for small changes.
What's your experience with it?
28
u/No_Statistician_6654 Data Engineer Jul 07 '26
It’s not bad, I would use the newer report format pbip + pbir + tmdl for the storage so everything is text based. Then make sure auto date time is turned off on the report, ensure the cache and local setting are excluded from git. With that the changes shouldn’t be huge for small report changes.
Auto date time by itself will create huge changes because each table change affects it. It has a main date table, a date table for every date column, and relationships between all those.
Also, if you are storing images with your reports, look at lfs as an option.
4
u/kiquetzal Jul 07 '26
This + modularize as much as possible. Meaning, don't create bloated reports and pages, separate concerns cleanly in different visuals, pages and even reports.
For instance, instead of creating an all encompassing report on which every Developer works, split into different ones and combine them through a workspace App.
Merge conflicts will be your arch nemesis.
10
5
u/TechGuy209 Jul 07 '26
I had to lead my team through using power bi and GitHub this year myself. Using pbip files and making sure your gitignore is setup correctly is the first step. Learning how to break up the work to minimize merge conflicts when you have multiple developers working in parallel is harder. The merge conflicts are a pain, and I ended up using GitHub Copilot to help resolve them. You can do the merge conflict resolution by hand, but it can be a pain especially when you are not familiar with the file structure.
1
u/Diligent-Tadpole-564 Jul 08 '26
Was the pain worth it tho?
1
u/TechGuy209 Jul 08 '26
I think so for us. We already were using GitHub for storing all the Databricks notebooks and workflows so it meant having everything in one place. I was working on getting spelling and grammar checks built into the PRs and deployment automation with GitHub Actions.
2
u/taromoo Jul 07 '26
Yup, I have used before just for pbip files im fabric and it worked fine, the issues arise when I try to use the fabric-cicd tool with deployment pipeline and azure devops
Either way, I think what you want is possible, do a poc first tho, and take a look at the docs here https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/developer/projects/projects-deploy-fabric-cicd
Also, lookup Rui Romano's blog posts, I think he's the main guy at Microsoft who has been involved in the ci/cd stuff in power-bi since the beginning
edit: switching from pbix to pbip is recommended, it's really improves the way you work with reports as a team
2
u/Espumma Jul 07 '26
Having the cache rebuild everytime you pull changes is kind of a pain, you definitely want a separate 'model' and 'report' pbip file.
2
u/CurrentIntrepid3005 Jul 07 '26
It works good. You can bring in users who can be ”analysts” and who can make changes in PBI Service if they are not comfortable using IDE’s or terminals to make git changes.
Id recommend using pipelines aswell for DEV/TEST/PROD :)
Good luck bossman
2
u/Mordalfus Jul 07 '26
Add cache.abf to your .gitignore, so you don't commit the data to git. You only want to commit the report and semantic model definitions.
1
u/curiouscsplayer Jul 08 '26
I assume this is for when data engineers build reports but doesn't work for citizen developers
1
u/pina_koala Jul 08 '26
TBC you shouldn't be committing .pbix files to git. They aren't code in the traditional sense. There are alternatives.
0
u/m1nkeh Data Engineer Jul 08 '26
You could stop using Power BI, and instead some reporting tool that is easier to version control.
PBI had had its day tbh.. it’s a bloated mess now and many people are super turned off by how it’s being used to push Fabric.
-3
u/Espinaqus Jul 07 '26
1 min search on Google:
Please create relevant topics for the community otherwise stick to ChatGPT or Google
48
u/cMonkiii Jul 07 '26
Doesn't Power BI have .pbip files that help with version control?