Data sources supported by DirectQuery in Power BI

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Power BI Desktop and the Power BI service have many data sources to which you can connect and get access to data. This article describes which data sources for Power BI support the connection method known as DirectQuery. For more information about DirectQuery, see DirectQuery in Power BI.

The following data sources support DirectQuery in Power BI:

  • Amazon Redshift
  • AtScale (Beta)
  • Azure HDInsight Spark
  • Azure SQL Database
  • Azure SQL Data Warehouse
  • Google BigQuery
  • HDInsight Interactive Query
  • IBM DB2 database
  • IBM Netezza
  • Impala (version 2.x)
  • Oracle Database (version 12 and above)
  • Oracle Essbase
  • SAP Business Warehouse Application Server
  • SAP Business Warehouse Message Server
  • SAP HANA
  • Snowflake
  • Spark (version 0.9 and above)
  • SQL Server
  • Teradata Database
  • Vertica

Data sources that have (Beta) or (Preview) after their name are subject to change, and are not supported for production use. They might also not be supported after publishing a report to the Power BI service, which means that opening a published report or exploring the dataset can result in an error.

The only difference between (Beta) and (Preview) data sources is that (Preview) sources must be enabled as a Preview feature before they become available for use. To enable a (Preview) data connector, in Power BI Desktop go to File > Options and Settings > Options, and then select Preview features.

Note

DirectQuery queries to SQL Server require authentication using current Windows authentication credentials or database credentials to establish access. Alternate credentials are not supported.

On-premises gateway requirements

The following table specifies whether an On-premises data gateway is required to connect to the specified data source, after publishing a report to the Power BI service.

Source Gateway required?
SQL Server Yes
Azure SQL Database No
Azure SQL Data Warehouse No
SAP HANA Yes
Oracle Database Yes
Teradata Database Yes
Amazon Redshift No
Impala (version 2.x) Yes
Snowflake Yes
Spark (beta), version 0.9 and later Yes
Azure HDInsight Spark (Beta) No
IBM Netezza Yes
SAP Business Warehouse Application Server Yes
SAP Business Warehouse Message Server Not yet supported in the Power BI service
Google BigQuery No

Next steps

For more information about DirectQuery, check out the following resources: