pbi-tools Release Notes

Releases since Nov 2020 are maintained on GitHub.

Older Releases

Upgraded AMO library to 19.10, supporting latest TMSL features
Resolve #6: In exported BIM, partition name matches table name if there is only one partition

Added extra error handling to V3 Model Feature Switch detection (enable via “Verbose” loglevel setting)
“info” action: Added ‘settings’, listing pbi-tools specific environment variables – Resolves #4
New CLI action: “extract-data”
- Extracts all data from a Tabular model into CSV files
- Supports reading from PBIX file as well as from live session

Upgraded AMO library to 19.9, supporting latest TMSL features
New CLI action: “cache”
“info” action: Added ‘pbiInstall/V3ModelEnabled’
“cache” action: Manages the internal assembly cache for MSMDSRV (Options: List,Clear)
Bugfix for Aug 2020 release (2.84)
https://github.com/microsoft/powerbi-desktop-samples.git added as submodule (/data/external) for testing purposes

Upgraded AMO library to 19.4.0.2, supporting latest TMSL features
“export-bim” action
- New argument added: -transforms RemovePBIDataSourceVersion
TabularModel Serializer
- Ignore timestamp properties in TMSL (for *.pbit files)
- Sanitize table, hierarchy, and data source names

Improvements to “export-bim” action
- Replaced -generateDataSources with -skipDataSources (reversed default)

Changed target framework to .Net 4.7.2 (allows compatibility with external libraries that only support .Net Standard 2.0, rather than legacy .Net Framework versions)
Upgraded AMO library to 19.2.0.2, supporting latest TMSL features
Upgraded various other 3rd party dependencies
Support for new PBIX metadata format (“V3”), introduced in March 2020 version of Power BI Desktop
- PbixModel API now available
PBIXPROJ format 0.5
New CLI action: “export-bim”
“info” action: Added ‘version’, ‘pbiSessions’
Compatible with Power BI Desktop May 2020 version
Significantly reduced exe file size by excluding 3rd party satellite assemblies
Support for PBITOOLS_PbiInstallDir, PBITOOLS_LogLevel environment variables
Application icon added
V3 files are supported with LinguisticSchema in either xml (legacy) or json format

Upgraded AMO library to 18.2
Addresses breaking API change in Nov 2019 release (2.75) of Power BI Desktop. Modification is backwards-compatible, however, so will still work with the Oct release.
- Details: ReportMetadata now has a dependency on (also added DirectQueryResources, QueryDependencyGraph - for v3 report model)
Fixed duplicated “DiagramViewState extracted” message

Upgraded AMO library to 18.0 so that latest tabular features are recognized by serializer (Specifically, measure/dataCategory)
Addresses breaking API change in Oct 2019 release (2.74) of Power BI Desktop
- Pre 2.74, IBinarySerializable was defined in Microsoft.Mashup.Client.Packaging.dll (implemented by ReportSettings, ReportMetadata, QueryGroupMetadata)
- Since 2.74, that interface has been moved to Microsoft.PowerBI.Packaging.dll
[info] action: Added ‘amoVersion’ property, returning the product version of the AMO library in use

PBIXPROJ format 0.4.1
- FIX: Url-encode measure names when serializing to file system to allow for illegal path characters

PBIXPROJ format 0.4
- Excluding Report/section/id (field is volatile and ‘name’ is already a unique identifier for sections)

Addresses breaking API change in May 2019 release of Power BI Desktop (i.e., this version is incompatible with earlier versions)

PBIXPROJ format 0.3.1
- Tabular model measure ‘extendedProperties’ are now supported (extraction previously failed)
Major rewrite of internal serialization infrastructure

Rebranding to “PBI Tools” (pbi-tools.exe) to leave scope for more general Power BI tooling that’s not directly tied to PBIX files only

PBIXPROJ format 0.3
- Mashup metadata now being extracted into folder structure rather than a single xml file
- Mashup (package) formulas extracted into folder structure instead of single “Section1.m”
Report extraction improvements: git diffs are now a lot less noisy as json documents are transformed to come out in a predictable format
- Json properties are always sorted alphabetically
- Numbers are converted from float to int where possible
- ‘queryHash’ and ‘objectId’ properties removed
CLI usage improved

PBIXPROJ format 0.2: ‘dataSources’ renamed to ‘queries’ to be consistent with internal PowerBI APIs
Bundling all dependencies into ‘pbix-tools.exe’ so that there is only one executable to distribute (using Costura.Fody)
Change: Mashup extraction format changed (full mashup package in /Mashup/Package)
Feature: Added extraction support for: Version, Connections, ReportMetadata, ReportSettings, LinguisticSchema, MashupPackageMetadata, MashupPackageContent
Fix: Full cleanup of deleted files (between extractions)
Breaking Change: target framework is now .Net 4.5.2 (required by Costura.Fody)

PBIXPROJ v0.1: Model/dataSources: use location (query name) as folder name (rather than datasource guid); always write ‘dataSource.json’

Dynamic discovery of Power BI installations, including Windows Store installs (64-bit only)
Shadow-copying of msmdsrv files when using AppModel binaries
FAKE build script (Clean, Build implemented)
Added ‘info’ cli action, listing all available PBI Desktop installs (to be extended with further items)
Logging improved

First preview: Implements ‘extract’ action (Model, Mashup, Report)
Limitations: 64-Bit only, requires PBI Desktop install in default location, won’t extract PBIT DataModelSchema
Targeting net45
Initial ‘.pbixproj.json’ implementation (version: 0.0)
CLI using PowerArgs