Creating a Direct Lake connection in Power BI Desktop, and how to verify it?

In this writing, I want to share how I create Direct Lake Dataset in Fabric to connect to Power BI Desktop, and how to check and verify whether it is under Direct Lake mode.

Other than the below steps, I found that it did not work and did not show any data in the Power BI desktop. Perhaps, I did something wrong, but for now, the steps that I usually follow are as below.

In the below sample, I tried to create Lakehouse by using Dataflow Gen2 (Preview) feature, because it shows similarity with what we usually see in Power Query Editor or Power Query Editor Online (Dataflow). But as you may already know, Lakehouse can be built in many different ways.

1. Create Workspace.

2. Create Lakehouse

3. Click the Lakehouse icon, and then lick New Dataflow Gen2.

4. When creating Dataflow Gen2, make sure that each load table must assign Data destinations one by one. And then, click Publish.

Note: Please check whether the column names contain spaces and ensure that there are no spaces in the column names.

5. Dataflow1 - Dataflow Gen2 type is created like below, and make sure that it is properly refreshed. On the very first time, the running-circle-icon is also shown just beside the name, Dataflow1, because it wants to show for the first time that the metadata is in the progress of creation.

6. Click the Lakehouse, and check whether all tables are properly created. And then, click the right upper corner to check SQL endpoint in order to check and fix datamodel.

7. Create relationships and fix the datamodel. And once it is done, go back to Lakehouse View.

8. In the Lakehouse view, create a new dataset. Make sure that New Power BI dataset is created from the Lakehouse.

9. The dataset name can be fixed, and this dataset has to be connected with Power BI Desktop.

10. Open Power BI Desktop, and then connect to the dataset that is newly created from the Lakehouse.

11. Despite appearing to be in direct query mode, Performance Analyzer does not display any information regarding the direct query mode. This suggests that it is operating in Direct Lake mode.

(If you check any of the direct query mode's Power BI Desktop, it shows the word, "Direct query" and the duration.)

In the next blog post, I will try to show how the performance is improved compared to the direct query mode, or compared to the import mode.

I hope this helps to have more fun playing with Fabric, especially, playing it in Direct Lake mode.