Last week I kicked off the new BI Polar YouTube channel with a video and blog post comparing and contrasting Power BI dataflows and datasets. In the days that followed, I continued to hear questions that led me to believe I hadn’t done a great job answering one vital question:

When would I use dataflows, and when would I use shared datasets?

Here’s the short answer:

And here’s the long answer: Lego Bricks and the Spectrum of Data Enrichment and Reuse.

The video focuses on – and demonstrates – sharing and reuse with both dataflows and datasets. It’s short and to the point^[1] and focuses on this one question.

The blog post takes a more conceptual view, using Lego bricks as a metaphor for dataflows and datasets and the types of reuse they enable.

If you’ve watched the videos and read the posts and you still have questions, please let me know.

^[1] As short and to the point as anything you’re likely to get from me, anyway. Brevity has never been my forte.