With Fabric,  Power BI enters the world of software development best practices. The Data Engineering and Data Science experiences in Fabric have readily available configuration for repos and CICD. Once one enters the Power BI experience the route was not so smooth so far. Things changed with the introduction of TMDL – Tabular Model Definition Language.   

The Power BI TMDL update provides a native solution to manage and track changes in models, model elements like tables, sources, collaborate and automated deployment.  

Besides Power BI Premium, TMDL is also available for SQL Server and Azure Analysis Services. 

 In my opinion, the most significant advantage of this update is the ability to track changes to semantic models. This is because TMDL provides Power BI developers with the ability to log in and edit a text-based tabular model, rather than requiring users to log into Power BI and compare different versions of the data.  

The Tabular Model Definition Language allows controlled and collaborative management of large and complex models, including incremental changes, create or modify a calculation, or create and organize display folders. 

Another benefit is the ability to organize your models by object. This means that users will be able to edit just one object without affecting anyone else’s work (collaboration in larger teams).  

Tabular Model Definition Language (TMDL) provides:  

• Easily readable format using a YAML-like syntax. Each tabular metadata object has a textual representation. Indentation is used to indicate parent-child relationships between objects, similar to Python.  

• Facilitated editing experience, including properties containing DAX and M expressions.  

• A hierarchical folder output format where each model object has an individual file representation, making TMDL more source-control friendly, and well-suited for collaboration.  

• TMDL integrates with code repositories and is designed to enable multiple developers to work on the same model.  

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