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marclelijveld / External-Tools-Model-Documentation

This repository includes everything that is needed in order to run the External Tools capability in Power BI Desktop and generate Model Documentation.
https://data-marc.com/model-documenter/
MIT License
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Error exporting vpax file #36

Open stepanov-a-o opened 2 years ago

stepanov-a-o commented 2 years ago

Hi! I installed the latest version of the model documenter, tried to run it, and I get the following error. See below.

A connection could not be made to the data source with the Name of '{"protocol":"tds","address":{"server":"bc1dartprod.database.windows.net","database":"bc1dartprod-1"},"authentication":null,"query":null}'. The XML for Analysis request timed out before it was completed. Timeout value: 3600 sec. Error 0x0003: Error exporting vpax file.

VPAX_Export_Error

marclelijveld commented 2 years ago

Hi @stepanov-a-o

Sorry to hear you run into an error. Can you elaborate a bit on the solution where you tried to run the model documenter? Cause the database connection is most likely your data source used in the model. Did you use a Direct Query connection? Or anything specific less common?

Thanks! --Marc

stepanov-a-o commented 2 years ago

Hi @marclelijveld !

Thank you for your reply. I tried to use the model documenter on a remote desktop (Azure VM). I have one data source - Azure SQL Database, and I use import and direct query modes.

Any ideas or suggestions on what to try/how to debug?

Thanks a lot.

Anton

marclelijveld commented 2 years ago

Hi @stepanov-a-o

Its a weird issue... since the database should not be reached by the Model documenter. However, this error says it could not reach your database... Can you provide me some details, such as:

Part of the Model Documenter is to generate a VPAX file, which now fails for some reason. To check where the error comes from, can you please take the following steps to see what is going on.

It can take a while before the VPAX file is generated and saved, depending on model size and complexity. More over, if you're new to DAX Studio please check if the following option is enabled before Exporting Metrics. File > Options > Advanced image

Let me know if you succeed in these steps! Thanks :) --Marc

stepanov-a-o commented 2 years ago

Hi @marclelijveld,

Thanks for the quick reply! See my comments below.

  1. pbix file
  2. Yes, the data loaded to the model
  3. I had version 2.99.621.0 (November 2021), and I updated Power BI to the latest version yesterday. Tried to run the Model Documenter after the update. However, the result was the same. PBI_Version
  4. The model is on my machine, i.e. the Power BI desktop.

I tried to generate the VPAX file as you suggested, and I got the following error. 2

I think my issue is related to the size of the model. I will try to increase the timeout and see if it helps. In the meantime, let me know if you have any other suggestions.

Regards,

Anton

marclelijveld commented 2 years ago

Hi @stepanov-a-o

Thanks for providing the details. Sounds odd, but I'm happy to see the same experience is there when you run it from DAX Studio. The Model Documenter is using the VPAX engine that is also used in DAX Studio, so I also expected this to happen. I'm happy cause there is nothing in the Model Documenter that broke this thing apparently :)

Though, that did not fix your issue yet. Can you try one more thing for me... If you build a new Power BI model, where you use the same dataset, but only a few tables for example, so you have a smaller set of data. Can you try to run the Model Documenter on that model, to see if your model size is influencing this, or maybe something else? As you implied yourself already, model size might be an issue. What is the size of your file if I may ask?

Thanks! --Marc

stepanov-a-o commented 2 years ago

Hi @marclelijveld

Sorry for the late reply. During my test, the size of the original pbix file was 1.87GB.

After that, I tried to load a subset of data (the reduced pbix file size was 584 MB) and ran the Model Documenter again. Unfortunately, I got the same error as before.

Last but not least, I tried to run the model documenter on another (new, small pbix file size) report, and it works as expected.

BTW, great initiative! Please keep this project going! :-)

Regards,

Anton

stepanov-a-o commented 2 years ago

@marclelijveld, an important note: all reports have the same data source - the Azure SQL database.

marclelijveld commented 2 years ago

Hi @stepanov-a-o thanks for circling back! Interesting to see that generating the vpax file does not work with such large files. I'll try to figure out if this is a known limitation or anything.

At this point in time, there is not much more what I can do, other than suggesting to limit the number of rows before generating the model documentation. That should make the model size smaller and you can at least document the Power Query code, DAX expressions, security roles and model structure.

I will follow up when I have more information.

--Marc

stepanov-a-o commented 2 years ago

@marclelijveld, thanks for your feedback! I will also share an update if I have any other findings. Anton