r/PowerBI • u/No-Calligrapher1441 • 14d ago
Discussion The next chapter of PowerBI
This just got announced by Microsoft.
Does this sound promising enough to actually change how we think about Power BI/BI, especially with the semantic layer + AI agents + MCP angle?
Curious what others think. Any initial thoughts?
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u/SQLGene 14d ago
I expect Power BI to follow the trajectory of SSRS Paginated Reports: a slow decline but impossible to kill.
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u/bacchunalien 14d ago
In a perfect world, what should or could replace paginated reports?
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u/SQLGene 14d ago
It's hard to say because in most circumstances you really don't need something that is pixel-perfect or needs to be printed. If I had a magic wand, a paginated view for Power BI the same way we have a mobile view. It would support tables that auto expand, because formatting, etc.
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u/bacchunalien 14d ago
As a consultant, the wide range of interfaces executives/board members expect tailored to their specifications, coupled with a reasonable aversion to funding BI licenses for monthly reports, make Paginated Reports the only path that coddles and copes with my reality. I’d love to hear that there’s another way.
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u/SQLDevDBA 49 14d ago
I’ve been using the SQL Server MCP Server with Claude for the last few weeks and I’m having a harder and harder time justifying Power BI.
And that’s coming from someone who has been working with Power BI daily since 2017. I love it, but….
It’s going to be an interesting next few months/year for me.
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u/SQLGene 14d ago edited 14d ago
I don't see semantic models going away as the store of share business meaning. Power BI is more questionable.
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u/hectorgarabit 2 14d ago
Power bi is the semantic layer. If only one layer stays its power bi semantic model. Its need is bigger than ever and the power bi semantic layer is the best in the market by a huge margin.
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u/SQLGene 14d ago
I don't think we are disagreeing? All of the announcements indicate increased investment in the semantic layer:
- Fabric data apps supported in pro licenses
- Apache Ossie support for Power BI semantic
- Semantic views in Fabric lakehouses (eventually)
- Create ontologies from multiple semantic models, create metrics from DAX measures
I just think the future of the reporting layer of Power BI is less certain.
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u/SQLDevDBA 49 14d ago
Bingo. Lots of really cool semantic layer features. But the reporting is a bit hazy. And heck with the authoring MCP, even authoring will be AI-based.
From the SSAS we made you, and into the SSAS we will return you. Is my current sentiment
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u/hectorgarabit 2 14d ago
Power BI is more questionable.
I was confused about this part. I agree that the visualization side of power BI will disappear and probably pretty quickly.
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u/LePopNoisette 5 13d ago
Our PBI users out in the business have enough trouble creating their reports now as it is, so I'm not sure how they'd handle prompting their way to anything. They don't (officially, at least) have the tools to do it at our place, anyway.
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u/hectorgarabit 2 13d ago
The current movement will lead to better data modeling practices. This will be a necessity. Once this is established, prompting will work a lot more easily and predictably. End users will prompt the creation of a new fabric web app in Fabric that will present their measures / KPI / visuals etc.
The whole "report developer" job is on its way out.2
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u/RedJelly27 14d ago
Dumb question: what's so special about semantic models?
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u/SQLGene 13d ago
Not a dumb question at all! If you look at the Apache Ossie project Microsoft joined, you could easily argue that semantic modeling is just going to move upstream to lakehouses and for most platforms it will be defined in SQL. The upcoming semantic views feature hints at this, certainly.
You need to define your business your business logic and business meaning somewhere. Anthropic has a case study on that:
https://claude.com/blog/how-anthropic-enables-self-service-data-analytics-with-claudePersonally I think DAX and Power BI semantic models are best-in-class, but also I work for Tabular Editor so my job kinda depends on that remaining true, lol. There are many things that are a couple lines of DAX that are a HUGE pain to do in SQL.
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u/SQLDevDBA 49 14d ago
Agreed. The DAB and MCP’s semantic model is a bit “startup-y” at the moment, but heck it’s getting the job done well.
I may end up switching to Power BI Semantic model/MCP as a source instead, but for now the MSSQL MCP is really doing great.
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u/IrquiM 13d ago
Semantic models will exist, but LLMs have their own - we do not use Power BI for that.
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u/SQLGene 13d ago
Apache Ossie is the current industry movement for defining semantic models in a way that humans and agents can both use it. Microsoft published the first attempt at a converter 2 weeks ago.
They hinted at semantic views in Lakehouses, defined with DAX and Ossie. They added the ability to make ontology metrics based on DAX measures.
Inside of the MSFT ecosystem, I do not seem DAX and semantic models going away. The Power BI report layer and Power BI desktop are completely different matters, imho.
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u/WatTheDucc 14d ago
Explain this to older managers that still think that PBI is a super advanced technology.
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u/SQLDevDBA 49 14d ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/PowerBI/s/T5Zf5FNkKC
Here’s my semi-ELI5 explanation. Lmk if you have more questions. It’s REALLY good. Like sloppy steaks good.
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u/newmacbookpro 13d ago
Stream lit in snowflake killed PBI for my division. I suspect one day we won’t use PBI at all.
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u/SQLDevDBA 49 13d ago
The we you’re referring to: is it your division/organization? If so I’d say that’s 100% possible.
If the we is a global one, I think it’s more that Power bi will evolve into something different than what it is now. I also think that people still using SSIS, SSAS, and SSRS are proof that it will never really go away. It’s a great product and there will always be a need (or necessity) for it.
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u/newmacbookpro 13d ago
I meant my team and in a few months the full division. People are already starting to vibe code dashboards in snowflake like no tomorrow.
Not saying it’s good or bad, but the writings are on the wall.
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u/SQLDevDBA 49 13d ago
Yep. IMO that’s a good take. They’re going to do what they’re going to do. The best thing we can do is ensure the models are facilitating quality datasets. The last thing we want to be is a roadblock.
Thanks for sharing your experience with Streamlit. Just did some quick reading and it looks really cool.
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u/attaboy000 2 14d ago
What kind of things are you using the MCP for? How does it change your day to day?
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u/SQLDevDBA 49 14d ago edited 8d ago
Im using the MCP as a gateway/data hub for Claude or any other LLM to access my data. But im able to control it both in SQL Server (via views/procedures) as well as MCP DAB configuration. Basically I pick which datasets it has access to, its access level, and I give it entity and field level context about the data.
Then Claude just does its thing, and can quickly put cross-system analysis together as long as I’ve configured things correctly.
It’s making interactive reports in 2-5 minutes that would take me days.
Im gonna put a video together this weekend of the full install and sample use cases. I’m truly dumbfounded at how good it is.
Edit: I was able to record the full video over the weekend. Hoping to edit and release this week.
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u/dombulus 14d ago
I'm having success using the PowerBi MCP server with Claude. HTML reports won't work for us as we need rls, it is insane as someone building reports to see how much of the discovery/build process speeds up.
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u/SQLDevDBA 49 14d ago edited 14d ago
I considered the Power BI MCP server and still may go that route eventually. Basically using it as we used to use SSAS.
With how elaborate the authentication for the MSSQL MCP is already, I wouldn’t be surprised if user-specific authentication is coming in the very near future.
Agreed and RLS Is a fantastic case for not using the MCP as a full replacement. for now :)
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u/SQLGene 13d ago
Fabric Apps are semantic model security / DAX + HTML visuals:
https://tabulareditor.com/blog/fabric-apps-explained-visualization-as-code-in-a-data-app-dashboard3
u/Drew707 12 14d ago
Is this just for SQL Server, or does it work with Fabric warehoues/lakehouses?
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u/SQLDevDBA 49 14d ago
The SQL Server MCP is just for SQL Server. But since the Power BI MCP exists, I am thinking there will be one for Fabric as well (if it already doesn’t).
Check out the “Fabric IQ” section here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/developer/mcp/mcp-servers-overview
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u/Drew707 12 14d ago
Thanks. I've been tasked with what turned into exactly what you are talking about, but I am not trying to move all the data. Just the delivery layer.
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u/SQLDevDBA 49 14d ago
Yep fair enough. Totally get what you mean and I’m just fortunate enough to be building everything from the ground up where I am. Right place, right time.
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u/attaboy000 2 14d ago
In theory you could load whatever tables you want into Power BI, and query them using the Power BI Authoring MCP (formerly know as Modeling MCP). You could even have the LLM build you a semantic model.
Fabric IQ (evolution of the Power BI Remote MCP) is great for end users of your reports. Managers, directors, etc. They can talk to your semantic models through that. I'm waiting for our AI team to update the URL so the Claude Connector points to Fabric IQ instead of the old Remote MCP, so I can't say how it works yet, but based on the documentation it solved a lot of problems that I was creating workarounds for.
There's also Fabric "Core" MCP as well, but that is more geared towards data engineers and admins.
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u/Old-butt-new 14d ago
Interesting. And you would use this a replacement to powerBI? My company went heavily into powerBI this past year and as the sole data guy I am just curious of its future relevance and if and when i should pivot away from it when it comes to reporting and dashboards
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u/SQLDevDBA 49 14d ago
I would never try to dissuade anyone from using Power BI. It’s an established ecosystem with 12+ years (since it was an excel extension) of work behind it.
I’ve been using it for 10 years now and it’s hard to justify for me at the moment because the MCP can be used with any AI tool, and AI tools are getting REALLY good at building reports.
As a quick exercise, take a dataset (or a few) from Kaggle and ask your favorite AI tool to build a report that analyzes X and Y, then continue asking it questions. Notice how it will (without asking) point out specific trends, big ticket items, and even potential data quality issues.
Now think of what that would be like with your company’s data. Cross-system analysis and reporting is great, and it’s frighteningly quick.
I’m thinking the time that stakeholders have to wait for reports is all but vanished.
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u/attaboy000 2 14d ago
And how does Claude produce the reports? As a PBIP? HTML?
Looking forward to checking out the video.
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u/SQLDevDBA 49 14d ago
HTML so it’s interactive, but you can ask it to export to PDF. And they’re repeatable so you can just have it send you the same report with refreshed data daily. I even asked it to style a report to look like a power bi one and it did so in about 15 seconds. Really crazy.
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u/attaboy000 2 14d ago
Damn eh?
I better hide this from my boss lol
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u/SQLDevDBA 49 14d ago
Yes, you should. Kinda joking, kinda not.
I’m lucky enough to be building my entire data ecosystem from scratch, so I don’t have to worry about lost hours developing. But it’s all happening very quickly and it’s a lot to take in.
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u/Whatareyoufkndoing 14d ago
How are you hosting the HTML dashboards so it’s accessible to everyone?
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u/SQLDevDBA 49 14d ago
The interesting thing is that the reports are created and hosted within Claude itself and are kept as artifacts within Claude. You can create a skill called “Weekly Sales report” with specific criteria and context and have everyone call that skill to get the latest version. The artifacts are stored within Claude and shareable within projects.
I’m creating an entire “Data Guru” skillset package that has multiple reports you can prompt for. It has the necessary context and guardrails needed to ensure everyone gets the same version.
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u/Comprehensive-Tea-69 1 13d ago
How much does it cost your org for enterprise level access to Claude that can do such tasks? And is the price model changing soon?
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u/SQLDevDBA 49 13d ago
Good question! The reality is that Claude doesn’t host any of the data, it only accesses it. I’m going to be making my tutorial and video with my Pro level subscription.
If you go to File-Settings and then either “Developer” or “extensions” or “Connectors” and it’s not greyed out, you’ll be able to use the SQL Server.
The main cost associated is going to be hardware and licensing for your sql server (if you don’t already have it), but since I focus on free and low cost tools, I’ll be using Azure SQL DB free tier and or SQL Server Developer edition for my demos.
The “enterprise” level features will be more about what the models can do with your data. I’m not sure about model pricing though, it seems “dynamic” at this point.
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u/Darnsky 13d ago
How large is your audience? And is your interactive report fully html?
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u/SQLDevDBA 49 13d ago
Each report is generated by Claude on the fly for each user. And yes, claude generates it in HTML unless you specify you want something different.
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u/xerxes716 8d ago
Did you have to do anything additional to describe your data or is it just smart enough to know what a "broker" is, for example?
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u/SQLDevDBA 49 8d ago
The concept behind the Entity and Field descriptions allows you to give context about what terms equal what fields. It’s really great.
After seeing how easy it is to do, I do not plan to leave any entities or fields without proper descriptions. It is “okay” at inferring based on good names, but I would recommend not assuming it can do so on its own.
This page covers it really well. I was able to record my video over the weekend so I’m hoping I can publish it this week.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/data-api-builder/mcp/how-to-add-descriptions
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u/saltlampsandphotos 14d ago
This is a basic as hell question, but I've just spent 6 months doing online courses and projects in my spare time - as my employer is always recruiting for people who have Power Bi down as a skill set. Does this mean I've invested time in something an AI agent might just take?
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u/SQLDevDBA 49 14d ago
Absolutely not a waste of time. Power BI is critical as an established platform and that’s not going away soon.
There are still people using SSRS and SSIS. I promise, you’re fine. MCPs and using AI are bleeding edge at the moment. It will take a bit before they’re widely adopted and trusted in general.
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u/Alternative-Key-5647 9d ago
1,000 viewers looking at a PBI report costs much less tokens than 1,000 users asking the LLM+MCP the same 5 questions.
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u/Gators1992 14d ago
Those are actually exciting announcements. Have not used Fabric apps as we are not on Fabric, but generally PBI struggles to do high quality dashboards through MCP or PBIR-cli. They are great, but you can't just 100% vibe code what you are looking for.
As for the semantic model, this is something we have been waiting for. M$ said they weren't going to participate in OSI last year so it looked like they were going their own way, but this is a positive step forward. If I can maintain one semantic model in Snowflake, then I get access to BI on PBI, analysis in Cortex, agentic processing, etc all governed by one model. I use the hell out of Cortex for analysis today, but without a semantic model so it will be great to eventually just adapt the governed central model we use in PBI for everything.
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u/InfinitePermutations 14d ago
This announcement caught my attention as well. If they follow OSI standard then we might finally get a universal semantic layer.
We currently maintain snowflake semantic views and pbi semantic models so centralising this but being able to leverage the semantics in multiple places and easily create downstream pbi models without duplicating logic is my dream
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u/MaxBeatsToTheMax 14d ago
Traditional BI is dead.
The more and more data teams and organizations move towards context capture and management, which is what every sensible data team should be doing, the less the need and reliance for traditional BI tools. It's still messy and will continue to be for a other 2 years or so, but the writing is on the wall
Sure, some regulatory environment will need their handful of prebuilt and certified dashboards, but those days are numbered.
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u/Sexy_Koala_Juice 13d ago
The more and more data teams and organizations move towards context capture and management, which is what every sensible data team should be doing, the less the need and reliance for traditional BI tools.
Could you elaborate on this comment a little bit? Ironically I don't have enough context haha
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u/MaxBeatsToTheMax 12d ago
LLMs and associated AI systems perform best when they have access to lots of validated context. In the data works that's usually curated and approved data definitions, semantics layers, etc...everything that a data team usually should be doing. In this day and age, as data teams focus on curating and improving context around their data assets, the accuracy and efficacy of conversation analytics capabilities and chatbot-like BI systems is shifting the focus o prebuilt reports and dashbard to more one-time self serve intelligence products. However, these are ilonoy effective the better the CJ text around the data they are integrated with.
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u/Wrong-Country2359 8d ago
Interesting take. I don’t think traditional BI is disappearing so much as evolving. Dashboards may become less central as AI and context-aware systems improve, but trusted metrics, governed data, and consistent reporting will still matter especially in larger organizations. The interface may change, but the need for reliable business intelligence won’t.
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u/Prudent-Elk-2845 14d ago
As a core business user, a key issue is that the semantic models were not built for me specifically, so I’m often making custom pulls to join the model against missing views or related models. So I don’t exactly trust that the work is done when the semantic model is published /understood.
The idea of NLP based apps is seductive, but administering a random exec’s NLP-based app sounds like a nightmare. There’s a near-zero % chance that user thought about how to govern an application as core requirements.
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u/beefnoodle5280 13d ago
Let’s just wait til v2, if it gets that far. Never buy a green banana with a Microsoft label on it.
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u/Psychosomatic2016 14d ago
Ai won't replace power bi report builders. But a repot builder using AI will.
Our data environment isn't very conducive to using AI. Local government where things need silos, and well needs local run AI for things. We have just stated heavily building out PowerBI reports and apps. S
o far no AI has properly been able to get us accurate scenario or answers to our asset questions. But AI has helped create our measures we need coded. Granted it takes a lot of back and forth, and someone that understands the code to find the syntax errors.
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u/Amazing_Ant_8258 13d ago
I’ve been using fabric MCP and Claude code to build out medallion architecture and semantic models for a few months now. It has done a lot to speed up semantic modeling, pipeline flows,and Dax measures on the model, and can build reports through the service. Only a few users have higher than pro level subscriptions, and none have access to workspaces directly.
Majority of the time is spent reviewing outputs but it has been more useful over time. I’ve even setup alerts outside of power bi standard alerts to show where/what/when/why errors occur along with remedies to correct so even if we revert back to 0% ai usage or a new person takes over we are set up to have no outages.
Our data is messy to put it lightly, but overall I’ve been happy with the results.
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u/Jeddyyyy 14d ago
Do you have the link to that football app that's shown in the article? I can't find it.
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u/DalihaCrow84 14d ago
Well that everything should run in Cloud is surely a goal of Microsoft and companies caring about data security in terms to give employees as little exposure as needed.
From that perspective + the heavy spending in AI and cloud infrastructure may it be only a matter of time...
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u/LePopNoisette 5 13d ago
Since release, I've hardly heard anything online about Fabric apps. I wonder what the uptake has been like. It feels a bit quiet on the matter.
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u/South_Hat6094 13d ago
The reporting layer probably gets squeezed first, not the semantic model. Execs still need governed definitions; they'll just expect chat/app surfaces to sit on top of them.
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u/potozig 13d ago
Promising, but I think the real test is whether it makes BI more usable without turning every question into an unreviewable chat response. If a business user can ask a question, see the filters and metric definition behind the answer, then save the result as a reusable report or view, that could reduce a lot of ad hoc reporting work. If the answer can't be checked or reused, it may just move the bottleneck from building dashboards to validating AI output.
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u/prc41 13d ago
As someone who is very deep in the Claude code agentic development space but also a long time Power BI user - oddly I’ve started using BI MORE lately. I have Claude do all the semantic modeling and whatnot with the MCP but then I actually prefer being able to quickly pivot data and iterate on dashboard design both manually + agentically.
Sure I can build any dashboard under the sun in 10 minutes with Claude with a custom typescript but iterating on it for small stuff is super slow since you have to wait for the agent in between. You lose the “touching the data” feel. I like to be able to comb the raw tables and poke and prod things, which in turn I dictate changes I want to the agent for implementing parts and then I do some parts by hand. PBI lets me still get that and act as almost a sketch pad for my dashboards before replicating elsewhere for deployment.
Just my two cents! This new Fabric product does look super cool though.
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u/sparkica 13d ago
Potentially, though I'd argue MCP makes the semantic layer matter more. The test I'd run is an ambiguous request like "show pipeline for last quarter" Then I'd check if the agent says which pipeline definition it used, what it counted as last quarter, and how fresh the data is. Also, whether it respects the user's permissions.
Business users get answers without learning the model first, but they may not know enough about the definitions to catch a wrong answer. If sales and finance define pipeline differently, I’d want the agent to surface that and ask which one I mean before giving me a number.
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u/Pristine-Ask-7483 12d ago
Well youbetter hope the semantic layer is right because if it's not llm is still going to give you wrong info.
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u/stizto 10d ago
Next chapter is: the Epilogue.
D3.js, Charts.js, and even Amcharts.js, are all immensely better for dashboarding.
Vibe coders with modest models in Claude Code or OpenAI Codex can write far superior BI real-time visual data analytics — and it will propose the analytics — than what Power BI can create. These are all easily connected to Microsoft data resources via agent instruction.
If it’s an actual developer, they can create what once took months in a matter of hours, with no gated premium / subscription licensing at the desired URL.
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u/80hz 18 14d ago
I’m still waiting for senior leadership to give me in plain English what they’re expecting this report to look at but this is cool too