Model Explorer

You have probably noticed that in Power BI service Datasets have recently been replaced by Semantic Models. Model Explorer is a new feature of Power BI Desktop. It is located in the Model view, and enables views and work with complex semantic models that contain tables, relations, measures, roles, calculation groups, cultures, perspectives…

To enable the Model Explorer, you first need to go to the Settings and check this option in the Preview Features section, and then restart Power BI Desktop. If you have done everything correctly, when you go to Model view, you will see the Model tab on the right of the Tables, within the Data panel.

The semantic model consists of contents that are not directly visible in the Data panel, and can influence the way we model and visualize data. In addition to report dimensions, there are measures, roles that we define for users of Power BI reports, relationships between tables, etc. Each of these categories is in a separate section that can be expanded or collapsed. In this way, we observe the semantic model with more or less detail.

Within the semantic model, we can find following sections:

Calculation Groups are used to group measures for better organization. When creating them, it is possible to prohibit the creation of new implicit measures (the old ones still remain in the model), which frees the model from redundant measures that were automatically created. They will be discussed in more detail in a future “recipe”.

Cultures is a section that displays all translations of the data model into other languages.

Measures shows all the measures that are inside the semantic model.

Perspectives represent subsets of dimensions, calculated columns or measures that are adapted to a group of users, that is, to certain business functions within the company.

Relationships shows relationships between tables within the model.

Roles represent the RLS roles that we created within the Power BI report.

Tables contains all metadata about tables within the semantic model.