The .pbix file.
The data behind a report someone else built, plus the definitions they used. Both are worth having, and the second is worth more than people expect.
Also .pbit, which are read the same way.
What it actually is
A .pbix is a ZIP container. Inside it sit the report layout, and a compressed columnar data model holding the tables that were imported, plus the DAX measures defined on top of them.
Reading the measures matters as much as reading the rows. A measure named Margin is somebody's decision about what margin means in this business, written down and used in production. Re-inventing that definition when the file already states it is how two reports come to disagree.
The exception is a report in DirectQuery mode, which holds no data of its own and queries a database at render time. That file contains a schema and measures and nothing else, which is a fact worth being told rather than discovering through an empty result. A .pbit template is the same situation by design.
At a glance
- Really a
- ZIP container
- Holds
- A compressed columnar model plus DAX measures
- Import mode
- Contains the data
- DirectQuery mode
- Contains no data, only the schema and measures
- Template .pbit
- Model and measures with the data deliberately removed
- Read here as
- Extracted. Tables and the measures defined on them.
- Status
- Ready
- Fidelity
- Data extracted
- Largest file
- 250 MB
The tables inside the report are read out of its model, along with the measures that were defined on top of them, so your own definitions are used rather than re-invented.
A report that queries a live database holds no data of its own. We read the schema and the measures and tell you which query to export.
Upload one
The analysis runs before there is anything to pay for. You see what it found, and the evidence behind it, first.
No account needed to start. You only pay when you like what you see.
What goes wrong, and what is done about it
01
A file with no rows in it
A DirectQuery report is a set of queries pointed at a warehouse. It looks like any other .pbix, is often large, and contains none of the numbers on screen when it is open.
The storage mode is detected and reported. What comes back is the schema and the measure definitions, along with which query to export from the source to get the data itself.
02
Measures that do not mean what their name says
A DAX measure can filter, override context and reference other measures. Two measures called Revenue in the same model routinely compute different things, and the report shows only the name.
Measure expressions are read and reported alongside their names, so a definition can be checked rather than assumed from a label.
Questions people ask
Do I need Power BI installed?
No. The .pbix container is read directly — the model, the tables inside it and the measure definitions — without the desktop application. What a measure actually computes is read as it was written, rather than guessed from what it was named.
Why would I analyse a report I already have?
Usually because you want a question answered that the report was not built to answer, and the data is trapped behind its visuals. The model inside is the dataset, and everything on this platform works on it.
What about Tableau?
The same job, a different container. A packaged .twbx carries its extract and reads as data; a bare .twb points at a source and yields calculated field definitions only.