CODEWITHSUNDEEP
powerbi
DatumPoint
DatumPoint

Reputation: 429

When I am working on a Power BI report using Power BI Desktop on my local machine, where is the data stored?

As I understand it, Power BI creates its own internal tabular model... but where?

Say I'm working with sensitive data, and the reports will be ultimately published to a Report Server on prem. The reports will only be accessible by selected Active Directory groups. If, during development, I save the pbix file to a network share, or internally e-mail it to a colleague, will it contain the sensitive data in an accessible way? I'm just thinking about ways the information could fall into the wrong hands. Is there an option to automatically save the pbix file with no data?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 361

Answers (1)

Alexis Olson
Alexis Olson

Reputation: 40204

If you zip a PBIX file (see this reference), you can see that the data is stored in the DataModel file inside the top folder level in a highly compressed format. Though it's compressed, I doubt it's encrypted, so it's likely that someone could theoretically decompress the data if they know what they're doing.

One option would be to export the report as a PBIT instead, which is designed to only save the report structure, relations, queries and such but not the actual data if it comes from external sources.

Upvotes: 1

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